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Stories from McClure’s 


* 




























» 





















# 






• • 










































Drawn by Charles Louis Hinton. 


“ Sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther away—a door 
slammed somewhere —then—silence.” 

A Little Feminine Casabianca. 


































'f'z-' 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Cowta Received 

OCT. 2 1901 j 

COPVRIQMT ENTRY 

3 « o/ 

CLASS **XXc. No. 

/ixet 

COPY B. 


Copyright, 1899 and 1900, by 

S. S. McCLURE CO. 

I9OI, BY 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 












CONTENTS 




page 

The Star-Spangled Banner 

Marion Hill 

* 

II 

A Little Feminine Casabianca 
George Madden Martin 

• 

31 

A White Sheep . 

G. K. Turner 

• 

• 49 

A Tune in Court 

Marion Hill 

• 

85 

v The Little Boy and His Pa 
Ellsworth Kelley 

• 

. hi 

The Accolade .... 

Louise Herrick Wall 

• 

131 

A Love S.tory. 

Annie Webster 

• 

• I5i 




















The Star-Spangled Banner 
























THE STAR-SPANGLED 
BANNER 


DOES IT GET WEIGHED? OR YET 
WADE? 

UNCERTAINTY OF MANY SCHOOL CHILDREN 
UPON THE SUBJECT 

By Marion Hill 

A FEW nights ago, at a home dinner 
party, one gentleman present, hav¬ 
ing occasion to quote a few lines of 
“ America,” bungled amazingly, as 
is usual in such attempts, and had finally to 
desist through ignorance. Seeking for help 
among his fellows, he found that they, too, 
knew but little more of the song than the 
opening lines. Amidst the comments 


ii 


12 


Stories from McClure’s 


aroused by this not unprecedented incident, 
the host’s ten-year-old daughter volunteered 
to help the big folk out, and did so by cor¬ 
rectly reciting all the verses. In response 
to flattering questions, she said that she had 
been taught the song at school. With par¬ 
donable pride she added, “ I will write it 
for you, if you like.” 

Of course we liked, and we furnished her 
with quieting paper and pencil; and then 
straightway began to forget her in our vigor¬ 
ous volleys of praise anent the whole-heart¬ 
edness of public-school education. But she 
again brought herself to notice by shortly 
presenting us with the following lines, very 
prettily written, and, as may be seen, in¬ 
telligently titled and put into verse form: 

AMERICA 

My country, tissuf the 
Sweet land of libaet tea, 

Of thee I sing. 

Land where my father died, 

Land where the Pilgrims pried. 

From ev’ry mountain side, 

Let fridmen ring. 


The Star-Spangled Banner 13 

My native country the 
Land of the noble free. 

Thy name I love. 

I love thy rots and chills, 

Thy woods and temper pills, 

My heart with ratcher thrills 
Like that above. 

Mingled with our amusement was conster¬ 
nation, for this little girl was not only more 
than ordinarily intelligent, but was also a re¬ 
markably good speller, and when she wrote 
“ rots and chills/’ she most certainly meant 
nothing less than the indicated putrefactions 
and ague. 

In connection with what follows, this point 
of spelling is an important one to note. Had 
the child been stupid and backward, her ren¬ 
dering of “ My country ” would have been 
no menace to patriotism, for when a little 
American bubbles over in hymns to liberty, 
and means liberty even while writing “ libaet 
tea,” the moral exaltation is not impaired 
in the least; but this child knew enough to 
spell liberty correctly, had she wanted to use 
the word. It behooved us, then, to find out 
what on earth she did mean; so to that end 
we questioned her, and in giving her replies, 


14 


Stories from McClure’s 


we call attention to their unfailing intelli¬ 
gence and directness, even where she was 
most at fault. 

" What is ‘ libaet tea’ ? ” 

“ One of our imports, I guess, from 
China.” 

“ And what is ‘ tissuf ’ ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ What do you think it is ? ” 

“ Maybe it is to fill out the line. Poetry 
has something that is called meter; maybe 
‘ tissuf ’ makes the right meter.” 

“ What do you mean by ‘ pried ’ ? ” 

“ Why, pry means to come, where you 
are not asked to come! ” This with a tinge 
of pity for the ignorance that could ask such 
a question. 

“ Then the Pilgrims pried into America ? ” 
“ Yes, I think so. Nobody invited them.” 
“ What is ‘ fridmen ’ ? ” 

“ I don’t know. I have thought that over, 
and can’t make any sense to it.” 

“ Why do you love ‘ rots and chills ’ ? ” 

“ I don’t.” 

“ But you say here that you do.” 


The Star-Spangled Banner 15 

“ Oh, / don’t say it; it’s the poetry says 
that.” 

“ Well, what does the poetry mean by 
it? ” 

“ I think it means that we must forgive a 
great many unpleasant things about our 
country, and say we like them just out of 
politeness.” 

“ What are ‘ temper pills ’ ? ” 

“ Pills for temper, don’t you think ? ” 

“ Did you ever see any such pills ? ” 

“ No. Did you ? But I’d like to have 
some.” 

“ Why?” 

No answer to this except a half-shy, 
half-wicked little smile toward her parents. 

“ What is ‘ ratcher ’ ? ” 

“ I really don’t know.” 

“ Haven’t you any idea ? ” 

“ Yes, it sounds like a disease.” 

“ How so?” 

“ It says, ' like that above ’—and there 
are chills a few lines above; and thrills are 
a sort of chills anyhow. I looked it up in 
my dictionary.” 


16 Stories from McClure’s 

“ This is truly wonderful! ” we gasped; 
and as a reward for the tribute we were in¬ 
vited to attend her school on the morrow, be¬ 
cause it would be “ patriotic Friday,” and 
we could hear them “ speak pieces, sing war 
songs, salute the flag, and talk patriotic 
things.” 

Her invitation was too rich in suggestion 
to resist entirely, and we did visit a school 
on the “ patriotic ” morrow; but deciding 
that our little friend’s school had already 
spoken for itself, we visited another. 

A class of about fifty clean, bright-eyed, 
wriggling boys and girls appeared perfectly 
charmed at being asked to perform their 
patriotic exercises, and executed them with 
a vim and thoroughness very creditable to 
themselves and to their teacher. They sang 
as many as a dozen patriotic songs; they 
knew more about Dewey, Sampson, Schley, 
and Hobson than those heroes know them¬ 
selves; they recited more historical facts 
about George Washington than could be be¬ 
guiled out of an ordinary man at the point 
of a pistol (one little girl essayed the life of 
Theodore Roosevelt, but being unable to 


Ihe Star-Spangled Banner 17 

keep the lightning-rod and electricity and a 
kite out of her narrative, sat down bathed in 
tears) ; they gave quotations in prose and 
poetry inculcating love of country; and, with 
especial ardor, they united in a pretty cere¬ 
mony which they called “ S’lutin’ the Flag.” 
The teacher conducted this salute by succes¬ 
sive taps of her hand-bell. Tap one, and a 
curly-haired lassie mounted the platform and 
unfurled Old Glory; tap two, and the entire 
class sprang to their feet as one child; tap 
three, and every hand made a military salute 
to the accompaniment of the rousing words, 
“ We give our heads and our hearts to our 
country. One country, one language, one 
flag! ” At the final word every little right 
hand was raised, the forefinger pointing 
to the Stars and Stripes. This statuesque 
pose was sustained until a last tap relaxed 
the tense muscles and gave signal for the 
little ones to drop back into their seats. It 
brought a choke into the throat to see it. 

But the demon of investigation was 
abroad, and refused to be throttled by senti¬ 
ment. “ Children, this has been very inter¬ 
esting ; so interesting that I want to ask you 


j8 Stories from McClure’s 

some questions about it. For instance, you 
say that you give your heads to your coun¬ 
try : now will one of you tell me how you do 
that ?” 

Not immediately. Smiles faded, and a 
pall settled over the community. At last, 
one grimy paw waved tentatively. 

“ Well? ” 

“We could cut our heads off and give 
them that way.” 

The gloom deepened when this answer 
turned out to be amiss, and all thought des¬ 
perately. Another paw waved. “ What is 
your answer, little man ? ” 

“ We must keep our heads inside of a car 
window.” 

This answer seemed so to satisfy the class 
that it was cruelty to disabuse them. But 
it had to be done. Another period of hor¬ 
rified reflection ensued, out of which ven¬ 
tured two guesses: 

“ I could give my head to my country by 
letting some one put a bullet into it.” 

“ I give my head to my country by put¬ 
ting my hand to my head in the s’lute.” 

The rejection of these advances created 


The Star-Spangled Banner 19 

such a weakness among the children that 
total dissolution was threatened, but a big, 
handsome boy in the rear saved the day. 
He was a very big boy, the class dunce prob¬ 
ably ; one of those chaps who promote them¬ 
selves in the course of years simply by out¬ 
growing their desks, and who in manhood 
make fine strides toward success untram¬ 
meled by learning. This long, lazy youth 
(whose extended limbs were undoubtedly 
the factors in the constant anguish of 
amusement to be seen on the face of the lit¬ 
tle boy in front of him) had been enjoying 
the exercises thus far as matters gotten up 
for his sole entertainment; but now, wishing 
a change of topic, he put an end to the pres¬ 
ent foolishness by rising suddenly unbidden 
and stating, with smiling decision, “ We 
can’t give our heads to our country. We 
only say so.” 

The children settled back in their seats 
with immense breaths of relief, and we felt 
that to refuse an explanation so patently in¬ 
controvertible would be to lower our dignity; 
we therefore succumbed. 

The heart being a more mysterious organ 


20 


Stories from McClure’s 


than the head, which is apt to flourish in 
memory by being unlawfully tapped by 
rulers, the second clause in the “ s’lute ” was 
passed over by the examiner. So, picking 
out a tiny damsel, he made on her these easy 
demands: 

“ ' One country ’—what country, little 
maid ? ” 

“ America, sir.” 

" Yes, indeed. And of course you know 
who discovered America ? ” 

“ Yes, sir. Columbia, sir.” 

“ Well, nearly. Columbus—can you tell 
me his first name ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ What is it?” 

“ Hail.” 

To offset this slip, the class was instructed 
to sing the song in mention, and their per¬ 
formance was beyond cavil, so hearty, so 
musical were their fresh young voices, and 
so inexhaustible were their memories—verse 
after verse rippling spontaneously forth, 
with never a book in sight! 

“ Do you like to sing patriotic songs ? ” 


The Star-Spangled Banner 


21 


“YES, SIR!” this in a thundering 
chorus. 

“ Better than other songs ? ” 

“YES, SIR!" 

“ Why?" 

The chorus was silenced. After a pause 
a bullet-headed, philosophical young Teuton 
said, with a slowness characteristic of a deep 
thinker, “ For pecause dey makes de piggest 
noise." 

“ What do you mean by patriotic, by pa¬ 
triotism ? " was naturally the next question. 

“ Putting flags on your house when some¬ 
body dies." 

“ Getting a half holiday and going down 
town to holler at the soldiers as they go 
by.” 

“ Patriotism’s killin’ Spaniards." 

These definitions were given by boys, to 
the disgust of a tiny girl, who jumped up 
with an indignant pipe of, “ Patriotism is 
love of your country." 

The teacher, who, as might be expected, 
was not thoroughly enjoying herself, beamed 
approval at little miss; but the examiner felt 


22 


Stories from McClure’s 


an unshaken pride in his own sex, for the 
reason that the boys’ answers published the 
fact that with them patriotism was synony¬ 
mous with action. 

“ What has your country ever done for 
you that you should love it ? ” was the next 
question. 

Oddly enough, this simple query was a 
poser. A timid girl remarked that her coun¬ 
try had given her an exquisition —something 
evidently very horrible, for she promptly put 
her head down upon her desk and howled 
with grief, utterly refusing to explain her¬ 
self. 

The blank, not to say terrified, faces of 
the youngsters forced the teacher from the 
subordinate part of listener to controller, 
and rising majestically from her seat, she 
commanded, “ Children, mention five ad¬ 
vantages you derive from being American 
citizens! ” 

With immediate cordiality they chanted in 
chorus, “ Liberty, protection at home and 
abroad, self-government, free schools, and 
public libraries! ” 

We couldn’t have touched the right but- 


The Star-Spangled Banner 


2 3 

ton. Encouraged at such unanimous knowl¬ 
edge, we probed it a little, and elicited the 
facts that liberty meant being out of jail, 
that you got protection if you could find a 
policeman, and that self-government was 
doing as you pleased. 

We now asked our victims if they would 
write for us a verse or two of their favorite 
patriotic song, and they made no objection, 
appearing even to like the employment. One 
child, announcing that she intended to write 
“ Andy’s quotation,” asked that Andy be 
allowed to recite it for her as a help to her 
memory. Andy, who proved to be the long- 
limbed idler, gallantly went to the trouble of 
extricating himself from his desk, stepped 
into the aisle, and apparently repeated these 
words from Drake’s Address to the Ameri¬ 
can Flag: 

Forever float that standard sheet! 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us. 

With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet, 

And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us? 

Apparently. What he really did say 
was made manifest by his written words, 


24 


Stories from McClure’s 


for he, too, chose to write the words for 
our inspection. We will reproduce them 
later. 

Before commenting upon the papers hand¬ 
ed in to us, we wish to present a significant 
statistic or two: The average age of this 
class was ten years and one month; in their 
last spelling review they had taken a percent¬ 
age of eighty-eight; and they were now al¬ 
lowed to write the song of their own choos¬ 
ing. “ The Star-Spangled Banner ” seemed 
to be a general favorite, but certainly not 
through the merit of being understood; for, 
from the very beginning, where “ dawn’s 
early light ” varied from the harmless shib¬ 
boleth of “ don selery eye ” to the more sinis¬ 
ter “ darn surly lie,” every line was garbled 
and twisted into some startling grotesque¬ 
ness, the whole ending with the agonized 
appeal, Oh, say does the star spangled Ban¬ 
ner get weighed? or the home of the free? 
or the land of the brave ? ” A simple line in 
the second stanza, “ blest with victory and 
peace,” appeared once “ less the fig trees 
and peas ”; and another time, “ bless with 
big trees apiece ”; while the stanza con- 


The Star-Spangled Banner 


2 5 

eluded by asking politely, “ Does the star 
Spangled Banner yet wade ? ” 

Of course, once in a while a phrase was 
rendered correctly, there being but one song 
which claimed the distinction of containing 
a line totally uncomprehended by any child 
using it. That song was Julia Ward Howe’s 
“ Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the line 
being the one which pictures the God of Bat¬ 
tles as “ trampling out the vintage where 
the grapes of wrath are stored.” Without 
exception the word “ vintage ” was inter¬ 
preted “ village,” and the rest of the line 
was varied to suit particular needs; one 
need expressing itself prosaically thus: “He 
is tramping round the village where the 
grapes arrive from shore.” 

The most damning quality of these ex¬ 
tracts was their painfully exact spelling. 
They could mean nothing else than what 
they said. In a vilely spelled screed there is 
always a chance that it may mean the right 
thing in spite of appearances. For instance, 
one little chap handed in a paper with the 
simple, brief announcement, “ Gloriglo, 
halua lua lura halua lua.” It was evident at 


26 


Stories from McClure’s 


a glance that this was the familiar chorus, 
“ Glory, Glory, hallelujah; ” and it was just 
as good spelled one way as another. But so 
much cannot be said for “ the swine of each 
pastry Arctic Ocean,” which was one child’s 
conception of the “ shrine of each patriot’s 
devotion,” and preceded the statement that 
Columbia “ roared ” safe through the storm. 
As Columbia had been stigmatized a few 
lines above as “ the yam of the ocean,” there 
must have been quite a mixture of pictures 
in that child’s mind. 

It is a pity that religious discussions are 
tabooed in our public schools, otherwise it 
might have been profitable to have interro¬ 
gated the pupil who made a coy suggestion 
to “ blast the popes that have made and pre¬ 
served us a nation.” Her mental concept 
may have “ praised the power,” but the situ¬ 
ation admits of doubt. 

Most of the songs were wonderfully 
well written and punctuated, the exceptions 
being rare. Following is given one of the 
rarest. The lad who wrote was probably 
tired. 


The Star-Spangled Banner 27 

Dam dam dam the boys are marching cheer 
up comrads they will come and aneath the tarny 
pag we will been an airn again in the freedom 
of our annie ammie ome. 

The translation we reserve to ourselves; 
but of course we cannot prevent the per¬ 
severing few from finally reducing the 
“ tarny pag,” “ been an airn,” and “ annie 
ammie ome ” to simpler terms. 

Believing that little children are never too 
young to be taught to reverence and love 
their country and to understand its heart- 
songs, and believing also that a Columbia 
which is pictured as a cross between a yam 
and swine cannot be a very lovely figure in 
a little patriot’s mind, the compiler of these 
notes ventures to suggest that when our lit¬ 
tle tots at school are taught the words of 
patriotic songs, plentiful and constantly re¬ 
peated explanation should go hand in hand 
with such instruction. Beautiful, indeed, is 
it to see a class give signs of thorough drill in 
inspiriting exercises of collective patriotism ; 
but to be ardently effective, the drill should 
begin with the individual. Then might 


28 


Stories from McClure’s 


Andy see some beauty in his address to his 
loved flag, which at present he is rendering 
^thus: 

Forever wave that standing cheat 

Where breeze the foe but falls beforus. 

With freedoms oil beneath our feet 
And freedom’s banner screaming orus. 



A Little Feminine Casa- 


BIANCA 

















A LITTLE FEMININE CASA- 
BIANCA 

By George Madden Martin 

T HE close of the first week of Emmy 
Lou’s second year at a certain large 
public school found her round, chub¬ 
by self, like a pink-cheeked period, 
ending the long line of intermingled little 
boys and girls making what was known, 
twenty-five years ago, as the First-Reader 
class. Emmy Lou had spent her first year 
in the Primer class, where the teacher, Miss 
Clara by name, had concealed the kindliest of 
hearts behind a brusque and energetic man¬ 
ner, and had possessed, along with her red 
hair and temper tinged with that color also, 
a sharp voice that, by its unexpected snap 
in attacking some small sinner, had caused 
Emmy Lou’s little heart to jump many times 


3i 


3 2 


Stories front McClure’s 


a day. Here Emmy Lou had spent the year 
in strenuously guiding a squeaking pencil 
across a protesting slate, or singing in 
chorus, as Miss Clara’s long wooden point¬ 
er went up and down the rows of words on 
the spelling-chart: “ A-t, at; b-a-t, bat; 
c-a-t, cat,” or “ a-n, an; b-a-n, ban; c-a-n, 
can.” Emmy Lou herself had so little idea 
of what it was all about, that she was de¬ 
pendent on her neighbor to give her the key 
to the proper starting-point heading the va¬ 
rious columns—“ a-t, at,” or “ a-n, an,” or 
“ e-t, et,” or “ o-n, on ”; after that it was 
easy sailing. But one awful day while the 
class stopped suddenly at Miss Clara’s 
warning finger as visitors opened the door, 
Emmy Lou, her eyes squeezed tight shut, 
her little body rocking to and fro to the 
rhythm, went right on, “ m-a-n, man,” 
“ p-a-n, pan ”—until at the sound of her 
own sing-song little voice rising with ap¬ 
palling fervor upon the silence, she stopped, 
to find that the page in the meantime had 
been turned, and that the pointer was direct¬ 
ed to a column beginning “ o-y, oy.” 

Among other things incident to that first 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


33 


year, too, had been Recess. At that time 
everybody was turned out into a brick- 
paved yard, the boys on one side of a high 
fence, the girls on the other. And here, 
waiting without the wooden shed where 
stood a row of buckets each holding a shiny 
tin dipper, Emmy Lou would stop on the 
sloppv outskirts for the thirst of the larger 
girls to be assuaged, that the little girls’ op¬ 
portunity might come—together with the 
dregs in the buckets. And at Recess, too, 
along with the danger of being run into by 
the larger girls at play and having the 
breath knocked out of one’s little body, 
which made it necessary to seek sequestered 
corners and peep out thence, there was The 
Man to be watched for and avoided—the 
low, square, black-browed, black-bearded 
Man who brandished a broom at the little 
girls who dropped their apple-cores and 
crusts on the pavements, and who shook his 
fist at the jeering little boys who dared to 
swarm to the forbidden top and sit strad¬ 
dling the dividing fence. That Uncle 
Michael, the janitor, was getting old and 
had rheumatic twinges was indeed Uncle 


34 


Stories from McClure’s 


Michael’s excuse, but Emmy Lou did not 
know this, and her fear of Uncle Michael 
was great accordingly. 

But somehow the Primer year wore 
away; and one day, toward its close, in the 
presence of Miss Clara, two solemn-looking 
gentlemen requested certain little boys to 
cipher and several little girls to spell, and 
sent others to the blackboard or the chart, 
while to Emmy Lou was handed a Primer, 
open at Page 17, which she was told to read. 
Knowing Page 17 by heart, and identifying 
it by its picture, Emmy Lou arose, and her 
small voice droned forth in sing-song fash¬ 
ion: 

How old are you, Sue ? 

I am as old as my cat. 

And how old is your cat ? 

My cat is as old as my dog. 

And how old is your dog ? 

My dog is as old as I am. 

Having so delivered herself, Emmy Lou 
sat down, not at all disconcerted to find that 
she had been holding her Primer upside 
down. 

Following this, Emmy Lou was told that 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


35 


she had “ passed ”; and seeing from the 
jubilance of the other children that it was 
a matter to be joyful over, Emmy Lou went 
home and told the elders of her family that 
she had passed. And these elders, three 
aunties and an uncle (an uncle who was dis¬ 
posed to look at Emmy Lou’s chubby self 
and her concerns in jocular fashion), 
laughed; and Emmy Lou went on wonder¬ 
ing what it was all about, which never 
would have been the case had there been a 
mother among the elders, for mothers have 
a way of understanding these things. But 
to Emmy Lou “ mother ” had come to mean 
but a memory which faded as it came, a 
vague consciousness of encircling arms, of 
a brooding, tender face, of yearning eyes; 
and it was only because they told her that 
Emmy Lou remembered how mother had 
gone away South, one winter, to get well. 
That they afterward told her it was Heaven, 
in no wise confused Emmy Lou, because, for 
aught she knew. South and Heaven and 
much else might be included in these points 
of the compass. Ever since then Emmy 
Lou had lived with the three aunties and the 


3 6 


Stories from McClure’s 


uncle; and papa had been coming a hun¬ 
dred miles once a month to see her. 

When Emmy Lou went back to school for 
the second year, she was told that she was 
now in the First Reader. If her heart had 
jumped at the sharp accents of Miss Clara, 
it now grew still within her at the slow, aw¬ 
ful enunciation of the Large Lady in black 
bombazine who reigned over the department 
of the First Reader, pointing her morals 
with a heavy forefinger, before which Em¬ 
my Lou’s eyes lowered with every aspect of 
conscious guilt. Nor did Emmy Lou dream 
that the Large Lady, whose black bomba¬ 
zine was the visible sign of a loss by death 
that had made it necessary for her to enter 
the school-room to earn a living, was find¬ 
ing the duties incident to the First Reader 
almost as strange and perplexing as Emmy 
Lou herself. 

Emmy Lou from the first day found her¬ 
self descending steadily to the foot of the 
class; and there she remained until the aw¬ 
ful day, at the close of the first week, when 
the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that she 
could no longer ignore such adherence to 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


37 


that lowly position, made discovery that 
while to Emmy Lou “ d-o-g ” might spell 
“ dog ” and “ f-r-o-g ” might spell “ frog,” 
Emmy Lou could not find either on a printed 
page, and, further, could not tell wherein 
they differed when found for her; that, also, 
Emmy Lou made her figure 8’s by adding 
one uncertain little o to the top of another 
uncertain little o; and that while Emmy Lou 
might copy, in smeary columns, certain cab¬ 
alistic signs off the blackboard, she could 
not point them off in tens, hundreds, thou¬ 
sands, or read their numerical values, to 
save her little life. The Large Lady, sore¬ 
ly perplexed within herself as to the proper 
course to be pursued, in the sight of the 
fifty-nine other First-Readers pointed a con¬ 
demning forefinger at the miserable little 
object standing in front of her platform, and 
said, “ You will stay after school, Emma 
Louise, that I may examine further into 
your qualifications for this grade.” 

Now Emmy Lou had no idea what it 
meant—“ examine further into your quali¬ 
fications for this grade.” It might be the 
form of punishment in vogue for the chas- 


38 


Stories from McClure’s 


tisement of the members of the First Read¬ 
er. But “ stay after school ” she did un¬ 
derstand, and her heart sank, and her little 
breast heaved. 

It was then past the noon recess. In 
those days, in this particular city, school 
closed at half-past one. At last the bell for 
dismissal had rung. The Large Lady, 
arms folded across her bombazine bosom, 
had faced the class, and with awesome so¬ 
lemnity had already enunciated, “ Atten¬ 
tion ”; and sixty little people had sat up 
straight, when the door opened, and a teach¬ 
er from the floor above came in. 

At her whispered confidence, the Large 
Lady left the room hastily, while the strange 
teacher, with a hurried “ one—two—three, 
march out quietly, children,” turned, and 
followed her. And Emmy Lou, left sitting 
at her desk, saw through gathering tears 
the line of First-Readers wind around the 
room and file out the door, the sound of 
their departing footsteps along the bare cor¬ 
ridors and down the echoing stairway com¬ 
ing back like a knell to her sinking heart. 
Then class after class from above marched 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


39 


past the door and on its clattering way, 
while voices from outside, shrill with the joy 
of release, came up through the open win¬ 
dows in talk, in laughter, together with the 
patter of feet on the bricks. Then as these 
familiar sounds grew fewer, fainter, farther 
away, some belated footsteps went echoing 
through the building, a door slammed some¬ 
where—then—silence. 

Emmy Lou waited. She wondered how 
long it would be. There was watermelon at 
home for dinner; she had seen it borne in, 
a great, striped promise of ripe and juicy 
lusciousness, on the marketman’s shoulder 
before she came to school. And here a tear, 
long gathering, splashed down the little pink 
cheek. 

Still that awesome personage presiding 
over the fortunes of the First-Readers failed 
to return. Perhaps this was “ the exami¬ 
nation into—into—” Emmy Lou could not 
remember what—to be left in this big, bare 
room with the flies droning and humming in 
lazy circles up near the ceiling. The for¬ 
saken desks, with a forgotten book or slate 
left here and there upon them, the pegs 


40 


Stories from McClure’s 


around the walls empty of hats and bonnets, 
the unoccupied chair upon the platform— 
Emmy Lou gazed at these with a sinking 
sensation of desolation, while tear followed 
tear down her chubby face. And listening 
to the flies and the silence, Emmy Lou be¬ 
gan to long for even the Bombazine Pres¬ 
ence, and dropping her quivering counte¬ 
nance upon her arms folded upon the desk, 
she sobbed aloud. But the time was long* 
and the day was warm, and the sobs grew 
slower, and the breath began to come in 
long-drawn quivering sighs, and the next 
Emmy Lou knew she was sitting upright, 
trembling in every limb, and some one com¬ 
ing up the stairs—she could hear the slow, 
heavy footfalls, and a moment later she saw 
The Man—the Recess Man, the low, 
black-bearded, black-browed, scowling Man 
—with the broom across his shoulder, reach 
the hallway, and make toward the open 
doorway of the First-Reader room. Emmy 
Lou held her breath, stiffened her little body, 
and—waited. But The Man pausing to 
light his pipe, Emmy Lou, in the sudden res¬ 
pite thus afforded, slid in a trembling heap 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


41 


beneath the desk, and on hands and knees 
went crawling across the floor. And as 
Uncle Michael came in, a moment after, 
broom, pan, and feather-duster in hand, the 
last fluttering edge of a little pink dress was 
disappearing into the depths of the big, 
empty coal-box, and its sloping lid was low¬ 
ering upon a flaxen head and cowering little 
figure crouched within. Uncle Michael 
having put the room to rights, sweeping and 
dusting, with many a rheumatic groan in 
accompaniment, closed the windows, and 
going out, drew the door after him, and, as 
was his custom, locked it. 


Meanwhile, at Emmy Lou’s home the eld¬ 
ers wondered. “ You don’t know Emmy 
Lou,” Aunt Cordelia, round, plump, and 
cheery, insisted to the lady visitor spend¬ 
ing the day; “ Emmy Lou never loiters.” 

Aunt Katie, the prettiest auntie, cut of¥ 
a thick round of melon as they arose from 
the table, and put it in the refrigerator for 
Emmy Lou. “ It seems a joke,”- she re¬ 
marked, “ such a baby as Emmy Lou going 


42 


Stories from McClure’s 


to school, anyhow; but then she has only a 
square to go and come.” 

But Emmy Lou did not come. And by 
half-past two Aunt Louise, the youngest 
auntie, started out to find her. But as she 
stopped on the way at the houses of all the 
neighbors to inquire, and ran around the 
corner to Cousin Tom Macklin’s to see if 
Emmy Lou could be there, and then, being 
but a few doors off, went on around that 
corner to Cousin Amanda’s, the school- 
house, when she finally reached it, was 
locked up, with the blinds down at every 
front window as if it had closed its eyes and 
gone to sleep. Uncle Michael had a way of 
cleaning and locking the front of the build¬ 
ing first, and going in and out at the back 
doors. But Aunt Louise did not know this, 
and, anyhow, she was sure that she would 
find Emmy Lou at home when she got there. 

But Emmy Lou was not at home, and it 
being now well on in the afternoon, Aunt 
Katie and Aunt Louise and the lady visitor 
and the cook all started out in search, while 
Aunt Cordelia sent the house-boy down¬ 
town for Uncle Charlie. Just as Uncle 


A Little Feminine Casabianca 


43 


Charlie arrived—and it was past five o’clock 
by then—some of the children of the neigh¬ 
borhood, having found a small boy living 
some squares off who confessed to being in 
the First Reader with Emmy Lou, arrived 
also, with the small boy in tow. 

“ She didn’t know ‘ dog ’ from ‘ frog ’ 
when she saw ’em,” stated the small boy 
with the derision of superior ability, “ an’ 
teacher, she told her to stay after school. 
She was settin’ there in her desk when 
school let out, Emmy Lou was.” 

But a big girl of the neighborhood ob¬ 
jected. “ Her teacher went home the min¬ 
ute school was out,” she declared. “ Isn’t 
the new lady, Mrs. Samuels, your teacher? ” 
this to the small boy. “ Well, her daugh¬ 
ter, Hattie, she’s in my room, and she was 
sick, and her mother came up to our room 
and took her home. Our teacher, she went 
down and dismissed the First-Readers.” 

“ I don’t care if she did,” retorted the 
small boy. “ I reckon I saw Emmy Lou 
settin’ there when we come away.” 

Aunt Cordelia, pale and tearful, clutched 
Uncle Charlie’s arm.” “ Then she’s there, 


44 


Stories from McClure’s 


Brother Charlie, locked up in that dreadful 
place—my precious baby-” 

“ Pshaw! ” said Uncle Charlie. 

But Aunt Cordelia was wringing her 
hands. “ You don’t know Emmy Lou, 
Charlie. If she was told to stay, she has 
stayed. She’s locked up in that dreadful 
place. What shall we do, my baby, my 
precious baby-” 

Aunt Katie was in tears, Aunt Louise in 
tears, the cook in loud lamentations, Aunt 
Cordelia fast verging upon hysteria. 

The small boy from the First Reader, legs 
apart, hands in knickerbocker pockets, 
gazed at the crowd of irresolute elders with 
scornful wonder. “ What you wanter do,” 
stated the small boy, “ is find Uncle 
Michael; he keeps the keys. He went past 
my house a while ago, going home. He lives 
in Rose Lane Alley. ’Tain’t much outer my 
way,” condescendingly; “ I’ll take you 

there.” And meekly they followed in his 
footsteps. 

It was dark when a motley throng of un¬ 
cle, aunties, visiting lady, neighbors, and 
children went climbing the cavernous, echo- 





A Little Feminine Casabianca 


45 


ing stairway of the dark school building be¬ 
hind the toiling figure of the skeptical Uncle 
Michael, lantern in hand. 

“ Ain’t I swept over every inch of this 
here school-house myself and carried the 
trash outten a dust-pan ? ” grumbled Uncle 
Michael, with what inference nobody just 
then stopped to inquire. Then with the air 
of a mistreated, aggrieved person who feels 
himself a victim, he paused before a certain 
door on the second floor, and fitted a key 
in its lock. “ Here it is then, No. 9, to sat¬ 
isfy the lady,” and he flung open the door. 
The light of Uncle Michael’s lantern fell 
full upon the wide-eyed, terror-smitten per¬ 
son of Emmy Lou, in her desk, awaiting, 
her miserable little heart knew not what 
horror. 

“ She—she told me to stay,” sobbed Em¬ 
my Lou in Aunt Cordelia’s arms, “ and I 
stayed; and the Man came, and I hid in the 
coal-box! ” 

And Aunt Cordelia, holding her close, 
sobbed too, and Aunt Katie cried, and Aunt 
Louise and the lady visitor cried, and Uncle 
Charlie passed his plump white hand over 


46 


Stories from McClure’s 


his eyes, and said, “ Pshaw! ” And the 
teacher of the First Reader, when she heard 
about it next day, cried hardest of them all, 
so hard that not even Aunt Cordelia could 
cherish a feeling against her. 


A White Sheep 




A WHITE SHEEP 

A STORY OF ORPHAN SCHOOL LIFE 
By G. K. Turner 

T HE colored youth was not strikingly 
intelligent, but he was deeply and 
impressively dramatic. He was 
the chance acquaintance of a sum¬ 
mer afternoon—a great, still, empty Sunday 
afternoon in the country, when chance ac¬ 
quaintances are at a premium. He was a 
more than ordinarily accomplished story¬ 
teller. His fixed and distant eye, his great, 
glistening, crescent smile, and his enormous 
hands, gave vivid emphasis to his primitive 
but intense emotions. All that afternoon, 
this grotesque being—but three removes 
from the African jungle—sat beside me in 
that bare New England pasture and told me 


49 


Stories from McClure’s 


50 

the story of his short and unenviable career. 
Below us, behind the stone wall at the foot of 
the slope, the clumsy Sunday vehicles of the 
countryside rattled slowly by, and disap¬ 
peared up the winding road in a trailing 
cloud of thick brown dust. And in the maple 
trees the vireos wound out their intermina¬ 
ble sultry song. 

His case was not unusual. The last two 
generations of his race had been seeing life 
in the slums of a great city. His parents, 
when he was but two years old, had suc¬ 
cumbed almost simultaneously to delirium 
tremens, or some similar refinement of civi¬ 
lization, and left him in the great, cold lap 
of the mother State. At a tender age she 
had sent him out to bear the bitter bondage 
of a small New England farmer. Since then 
he had remained in this country place—a 
fixture, apparently, upon the soil. “ Where 
were you,” I asked, “ before they sent you 
here ? ” 

“ At the State primary school, Boss—the 
one in Munster.” 

I knew the place. It is a big white, cold, 
old-fashioned barn of a building, set at the 


A White Sheep 


5 1 


summit of a barren hill. I remembered all 
I had seen there—the long lines of squirm¬ 
ing, shuffling, bullet-headed small boys, 
looking for all the world like gray rats, in 
their dull State uniforms; the hulking, 
vicious big boys—half-fledged, callow crim¬ 
inals, hungering and thirsting after wick¬ 
edness ; the unfeminine little girls, with their 
sharp features and straight hair; the sick¬ 
ening smell of coarse boiled food in the 
empty kitchens; the rows of iron beds, the 
keepers, and, over all, the tall, lank, sallow 
superintendent, with his cold, fishy gray 
eyes and black side-whiskers, cut well up 
toward his cheekbones—a model for an im¬ 
mortal statue of the institution autocrat. 
It was no picture of happy childhood to 
treasure in a sentimental memory. 

“ Yes, sah,” he continued. “ I was there 
foh a long time—from when I was jest a 
baby till I was most fo , teen.’ , 

“ How’d you like to go back, George,” 
said I, “ and finish your education ? ” 

The question excited him. He started up 
quickly from his lounging position. “ I 
wouldn’t do it. No, sah. I don’t want none 


5 2 


Stories from McClure’s 


of them educationin’ me no more. I 
wouldn’t go back there. No, sah; I’d die 
fust, I would. I’d die right hyar.” 

“ Why not?” said I. 

“ Why not. ’Cause I wouldn’t—that’s 
why. Look hyar, Boss,” he said, lowering 
his voice to a vast confidential whisper, 
“ you don’ know ’bout that there primary 
school. That was a bad place, it was. Yes, 
sah. They didn’t act as if you had no feel- 
in’s there; they treat you jest lake you was 
sheeps or cows or dogs. The fellers there, 
too, they was mighty bad ones. Oh, they 
despret—fightin’ all the time, jest lake lions 
and tigers. Yes, sah, and steal and lie and 
do everythin’. Oh, they was dangerous. 
You know that Ed Fitts that killed a woman 
in Manchester las’ spring. He’s one of ’em. 
Yes, sah, I knows him; he was there. And 
there’s lots more of ’em there, too—jest such 
as him—in prison now hundreds of ’em.” 

“Weren’t there any good ones?” I 
asked. 

“ No, sah, nothin’ to speak of. They was 
most all jest the same as that.” 

“ Say, George,” said I, remembering the 


A White Sheep 


53 

famous investigation, “ you must have been 
there when that Pierpont boy was there.” 

“ Who’s that ? ” said the youth; “ that lit¬ 
tle fellow. Yes, sah, I remember him; I 
recollect him mighty well.” 

“ What kind of a fellow was he ? ” said I. 

“ Oh, he was awful smart little feller, and 
a mighty good feller, too. He was different, 
he was; yes, sah.” 

“ How’d he get along there? ” said I. 

“ Say, Boss, I’ll tell you all ’bout that little 
feller if you wants me to,” said the youth. 

“ Go ahead,” said I. 

This was his story: 

Yes, sah, that little feller, I recollect the 
very fust day he come there. I was wukkin’ 
on the house job, and I was in the sup’in- 
ten’ant’s office when they took him in. He 
was a little white, puny feller. His legs 
weren’t no bigger’n little pieces of grass. 
But his eyes kept lookin’, lookin’ right 
straight ahead—jest lake a lion’s. Yes, sah, 
he had terrible bright eyes, he did. 

“ What’s you name ? ” says ol’ sup’inten’- 
ant. 

“ I dunno ” 


54 


Stories from McClure’s 


“ You dunno?” says sup’inten’ant, kind 
o’ mad lake. 

Then the feller that brings him in says, 
“ Cornelius Sullivan, that’s his name.” 

“ No ’tain’t, neither,” says little feller. 

“ That’s what his mother says befoh she 
dies,” says the man. 

“ She ain’t my mother,” says the little 
feller, starin’ at the man, with them eyes 
a-blazin’. 

“ What’s you name then ? ” says ol’ sup’- 
inten’ant. 

“ I dunno,” says little feller, lookin’ down. 
“ I don’ remember; I was sick; I forgot.” 

“ Guess he sick all right,” says the man, 
rappin’ on his head. 

“ You liar,” says little feller. “ You lemme 
go; you ain’t got no right to take me hyar.” 

“ That’ll do; that’ll do,” says ol’ sup’in- 
ten’ant. “ You march inside there pretty 
mighty quick.” So little feller march in; 
he couldn’t do nothin’ else. 

They puts him in the Little Yard, ’long 
with the other little boys. Fust other fellers 
don’ know whether they likes this little fel¬ 
ler or not. Fust time new fellers come, they 


A White Sheep 


55 


all jest the same. Fust week they cry, cry 
all the time. This little feller different; he 
don’ cry much—only a little, way round 
back where they don’ see him. Then the 
fellers goes up to him: “ Say, what’s you 
name? ” 

He don’ answer. 

“ Oh, never min’, you all right; you’ll 
lake it here. What’s you name ? ” 

He don’ answer one word. 

“ I know what’s his name,” I says. “ I 
heard it in sup’inten’ant’s office. His name’s 
Cornelius Sullivan.” 

“ You liar,” says little feller, “ I ain’t no 
Irish feller.” 

The other fellers, they all laugh when 
they hears that. There’s all kinds of boys 
there—Irish, Italians, Germans, colored fel¬ 
lers—everythin’, exceptin’ only Chinamens. 
They ain’t no Chinamens there. I guess 
not! No, sah; they’d kill them. Then one 
feller hollers out: “ I’ll tell you what’ we’ll 
do; we’ll call him Irish.” So after that 
they always calls him Irish—all the time. 

Fust he don’ like it; he wants to fight. 
Then he don’ care ’tall. After a while they 


5 6 


Stories from McClure’s 


all lake him better. He ain’t afraid of 
nothin’. Fust day he come he wants to fight 
Mike Finnegan. That Mike Finnegan, he’s 
the biggest feller there is in the Yard. 
Everybody’s ’fraid of him; he’s ’busin’ you 
all the time, makin’ you do things you don’ 
want to, and twistin’ you arm and all such 
as that. Fust day Irish comes, he’s twistin’ 
little feller’s arm, when the Boss of the Yard 
ain’t lookin’. 

“ Oh, lemme go, lemme go,” little feller 
hollerin’ like that, kind of under his breath, 
so Boss can’t hear him. " Please lemme go; 
I won’t never do it again.” 

Irish, he walks right up to him. He say: 
“ Leggo him, you big caff, you.” Then no¬ 
body say a word. Seems lake he ain’ more’n 
half as big as Mike. 

Mike stops twistin’ little feller. “ Who 
goin’ to make me ? ” he say. 

“ I am.” 

“ Who’s you?” 

Oh, they’d been a fight right there, only 
the Boss he come back. Out there at school 
you can’t fight, without you gets permission. 
No, sah. If you does, they goin’ to lam- 


A White Sheep 


57 


baste you. So Mike, he say, under his breath 
lake: “You jest wait; I’ll fix you” After 
that they both waitin’, waitin’. Irish he 
don’ say nothin’, but he ain’ ’fraid, neither. 

Right after that they had that fight with 
them town fellers down at Munster. Out 
there at school you’s all graded—fust grade 
and second grade and third grade and all 
lake that—’cordin’ to how puffect actin’ you 
is. Fust grade and second grade can go 
down town sometimes. All the others, they 
can’ go outside the groun’s. When the fel¬ 
lers go down to town they shamed—they all 
walk with their heads down, lake this—all 
jest the same, I don’ care who ’tis—jest lake 
they was in prison. Only Irish when he 
fust come, he don’ care. He hoi’ his head 
right up in the air. 

Well, that time I was tellin’ you ’bout, 
whole lot of school fellers goes down to 
Munster. The other day jest before that, 
Munster fellers comes up to school to play 
base-ball, and we licks ’em. We always 
does—those fellers at school plays ball all 
the time—ever since they so high. Munster 
fellers, they mad. When they sees school 


58 


Stories from McClure’s 


fellers down town, they all holler “ Jail-bird, 
Jail-bird,” loud’s they can holler. 

That make school fellers mighty mad; 
only they won’t fight; they don’ dare to for 
fear what 'they’ll get when they gets back 
to school. But Irish starts it; he ain’t ’fraid. 

Then pretty soon they all fightin’— 
throwin’ rocks, too. One Munster feller gets 
his head cut mighty bad. Then they all 
runs; they ain’t hollerin’ “ Jail-bird ” no 
more. School fellers foller ’em, throwin’ 
stones and rocks. They don’ care now; they 
started, they despret; chase Munster fellers 
all over, and break winders and holler. 

Then right away Munster cop comes 
along, and they runs back to school. He 
can’t catch ’em; he ain’t no good—big fat 
feller, different from city cop. He’s nothin’ 
only one of them kind of farmer policemens. 
He comes up to school right away, puffin’ 
and blowin’, and goes to ol’ sup’inten’ant. 
He says: “ Them boys been down breakin’ 
winders and chasin’ our boys. They most 
kill one feller.” He don’ say nothin’ ’bout 
them Munster fellers beginnin’ it. 

Then ol’ sup’inten’ant calls fellers all in 


A White Sheep 59 

and gets ’em all up in a row. He say: 
“ Who’s that hit that Munster boy ? ” 

“ I dunno.” 

“ I dunno/' 

Nobody knows. 

“ Sit on the bench foh eight days,” he 
say. Yes, sah, eight days. Just lake, say, 
to-day’s Monday; well, way round by Mon¬ 
day again. Jest set there; can’t go out 
’tall. When sup’inten’ant say that, Irish he 
jump right up. “ Don’ keep ’em in,” he 
say, “ I’m the feller; I started it.” 

“Oh, you did, did yer?” 

“ Yes, sah. They hollerin’: ‘ Jail-birds, 
jail-birds,’ all the time. They ain’t got no 
right to holler at us lake that. I ain’t no 
jail-bird.” 

“ Oh, you ain’t, ain’t yer? I’ll show yer. 
I’m goin’ to jail-bird you.” 

Then ol’ sup’inten’ant takes him right out 
before rest of ’em, and lambastes him awful. 
Irish he don’ holler or nothin’. Only he 
jest kind of white and ol’ lookin’. Ol’ sup’in¬ 
ten’ant can’t make him cry. And it don’ 
make no difference after all. We all sets 
on the bench eight days jest the same. 


6o 


Stories from McClure’s 


After that, fellers all lake Irish—all only 
Mike Finnegan, he don’ lake him; he’s 
’busin’ him all the time. Irish he wants to 
fight him. He goin’ to the Boss all the 
time and say in’ “ I wants to fight that fel¬ 
ler.” 

Out there to school you fights—they don’ 
mind it ’tall—providin’ you goes and gets 
permission. Then they makes a ring, lake 
that, and they all stan’ round and the Boss 
he say: “ Ready—go.” Then they fights. 
They don’ hoi’ their hands up lake that; 
they holds ’em down, this a way. Oh, they 
fighters down there; they know how— 
little fellers, no bigger’n that. 

When Irish asks the Boss, he just laugh 
and say: ‘‘You don’ want to fight him; 
you ain’t big enough.” But all the time 
Irish keeps at him. He’s gettin’ stronger 
lookin’ then, all the time. The ol’ woman 
who had him before didn’t give him enough 
to eat, so he’s better off at school. Pretty 
soon Boss he say: “ All right; go ahead.” 

Then they makes the ring, and they goes 
at it. Golly, how they fights. They never 
see no fightin’ lake that there before. Mike 


A White Sheep 


61 


Finnegan, he’s biggest feller in the Yard, 
and mighty good fighter too. Irish, he’s 
only a little feller, but you never see such a 
fighter. He went foh him, and smashed 
him and hammered him, jest sayin’ nothin’ 
’tall, only fightin’. Mike he couldn’t stan’ 
it. He had to quit. Little feller had him 
licked all to pieces. Then how they hollered; 
and the Boss, he jest laugh and laugh. 
“ What’s matter with you, Mike ? ” he say. 
“ Sick?” 

Mike he don’ say nothin’. 

“ Look hyar,” says Boss to Mike. “ Don’ 
you try none of you dirty tricks on that fel¬ 
ler. If you do, you goin’ to be mighty 
sorry.” 

That Mike, he mighty mean feller; he do 
anythin’. After that, Irish, he’s head 
rooster of that Yard. All the fellers lake 
him too, mighty well. Little while after that 
our Boss, he leaves. He’s got another job. 
Fellers hates to have him go. They lakes 
him, better’n teachers, or anybody. They 
makes him a mighty fine box out of wood in 
the wuk-shop, wukkin’ playtimes to get it 
done. And they buys him a gran’ necktie 


62 


Stories from McClure’s 


down to Munster—one of them red velvet 
ones, with gold spots in it. 

The next Boss he’s mighty different. 
He’s kind of relation to the sup’inten’ant, 
and he don’t care. He’s big fat feller, with 
great big neck, and awful red face. Fellers 
don’ lake him ’tall. He’s all time hollerin’ 
and interferin’. He don’ call us by our name, 
neither—only jest by number. He say: 
“ You all got numbers, ain’t you, where you 
sleeps and eats ? ” 

“ Yes, sah.” 

“ Well, then, I’m goin’ to call you by 
number, understan’ ? I ain’t got no time to 
learn all you names.” 

He’s all time sayin’, “ Hyar, Hyar! Look 
hyar, you stop that.” And “ go get my 
coat,” and “ black my shoes.” And “ you do 
that ” and “ you do this.” He don’ do noth¬ 
in’ himself. Then he’s smashin’ us all the 
time. For nothin’, too; he can’t stop it. 
Everybody’s ’fraid; he’s strong jest lake a 
giant. Irish, he’s lucky; he keeps out of his 
way long time. By and by one day, Boss he 
hollers “ Number 14 ”—that’s his number— 
“ you come hyar.” 

Irish he don’ budge. 


A White Sheep 


6 3 


Then he holler again. 

Irish he don’ stir. 

He say: “Oh, you won’t, won’t yer?” 
and he goes over and gets him. Boys all 
mighty solemn. “ What you mean not 
cornin’ when I calls yer?” 

“ You didn’t call me.” 

“ Didn’t I call you number? ” 

“ I dunno, and I don’ care; I ain’t no 
number, I’se a boy. I got a name jest same 
you has.” 

Then Boss he starts to smash him. But 
he don’ smash him much. Foh all of a sud¬ 
den the fellers they can’ stan’ it no longer. 
They all breaks loose and comes for him, 
more’n about fifty of ’em. Oh, they despret. 
They climbs all over that Boss; they knocks 
him down, and poun’s him, and kicks him 
fearful—yes, sah—and breaks his watch. 
He hollers loud’s he can holler. All the rest 
comes rushin’ in; ol’ sup’inten’ant and all. 
Sup’inten’ant, he say: “ What’s this ? 

What’s this ? ” He terrible mad. 

New Boss he can’t hardly speak. 

“ This goin’ to stop,” says ol’ sup’inten’¬ 
ant. “Who’s the fellers started it?” 

“ That’s the feller,” says the new Boss, 


64 Stories from McClure’s 

puffin’ and blowing pointin’ his finger at 
Irish. 

“ So, it’s you again, is it ? ” says ol’ sup’- 
inten’ant, jest glarin’ at him fearful. 

“ ’Tain’t my fault,” says Irish. “ He’s 
smashin’ us all the time, and callin’ us num¬ 
bers. He ain’t got no right to. Look-a 
there, where he’s been smashin’ me.” 

“ You keep still,” says ol’ sup’inten’ant. 
“ I don’ want to hear nothin’ from you.” 

New Boss, he comes round all right, only 
he’s got a mighty black eye!. Ol’ sup’inten’¬ 
ant say: “We goin’ to stop this, we goin’ 
to stop it right away. I don’ care if you kill 
half of ’em doin’ it.” Then he takes Irish 
over to the Boss, and he wallops him right 
there; he wallops him fearful. Irish he jest 
stands it. He don’ holler or nothin’. 

Ol’ sup’inten’ant say: “ He’s bad one.” 

“ Never mind, I’ll take care of him” says 
the Boss, lookin’ dangerous. 

After that he smashes us more’n ever. 
We don’ do nothin’ no more. It ain’t no use. 
Only Mike Finnegan; he don’t smash him. 
Mike he’s too cunnin’. He tells him he didn’ 
fight him that time—and likely he didn’ 


A White Sheep 


6 5 


neither. He won’t do nothin’ that Irish 
starts. Mike he’s sayin’: “Yes, sah,” “yes, 
sah,” “ yes, sah” all the time and runnin’ 
and gettin’ his coat and all such as that. 
But the Boss, he’s jest lavin’ foh Irish. He 
lambastes him, and he wuks him, and he 
sends him away from the table before he’s 
got ’nough to eat—all foh nothin’; and he 
makes him lift heavy things he hadn’t ought 
to. He say: “ I’se goin’ to break you. You 
see.” 

Irish he can’ hardly stan’ it. He’s gettin’ 
thin, and his back is all over long white 
marks. He shows ’em to us at night. Bye 
and bye fellers find out somebody’s tellin’— 
tellin’—mostly on Irish. He can’ do nothin’. 
We dunno who ’tis, but we guess mighty 
near. It’s Mike Finnegan; he’s gettin’ back 
at Irish. Fellers don’ lake it. Irish he ain’t 
savin’ nothin’, but he’s actin’ mighty queer. 
He’s earnin’ pennies and savin’ ’em all the 
time. Oh, he a regular miser feller. The 
other fellers don’ know what it means. He 
don’ want ’em to; he’s gettin’ ready to run 
away. 

Pretty soon the Boss gets mad at Mike 


66 


Stories from McClure’s 


Finnegan. He catches him lyin’ to him. 
Then he smashes him; he smashes him good. 
Mike he don’ say nothin’; he waitin’, waitin’. 

Right after that, Irish he wake up in the 
night, and see Mike Finnegan crawlin’ out 
of bed. He goes creepin’, creepin’ over into 
the corner, and lights a match—careful, 
careful, so they won’t hear him. Irish he 
follows him soft in his bare feet. Right 
there’s a lot of shavin’s and oil he’s stole 
from the lamps, stuffed into a hole in the 
floor. Everybody sleepin’ and snorin’; all 
dark. Irish grabs him. 

“ Look hyar, what you doin’ ? ” 

He jumps; he thinks he’s caught. Then 
he don’ care; he’s sees it’s Irish, “ I’m goin’ 
to burn up this place. Then we’ll all get 
away.” 

“ You stop that business mighty quick. 
You’d burn all the girls up, and most of the 
fellers too, pretty likely. If I catches you 
out again I’ll kill you.” 

So he goes back swearin’ and cussin’. 
Some of the fellers wake up then, though 
they whisperin’ all the time. “ We’ve got to 
keep watchin’ him,” says Irish. “ Maybe 


A White Sheep 


67 

he’ll do it again. We’ll all get burned to 
death sleepin’.” 

So they keep watchin’, all night long, but 
he don’ get up again. Next mornin’ they 
throw all the stuff away, and nobody knows 
nothin’ about it. Oh, that’s a bad place; 
lots of things they never know about just 
such as that. 

Next day, Irish he says to fellers: “ You 
know what he’s goin’ to do, if that fire’d 
gone ? He’s goin’ tell ’em I done it. They’d 
believe it, too.” That’s right, too. That 
Mike Finnegan, he’s a mean one—if we all 
burned up, he don’ care; then he’d say Irish 
done it. 

After that Irish he still savin’, savin’. He 
ain’t goin’ off without no money. The fel¬ 
lers that does that they don’ get nowhere. 
They always get caught. He’s goin’ to get 
one dollar—jest one dollar—and then he’s 
goin’. One old feller in the big yard, who’s 
run away a lot, tells him he’s jest got to have 
a dollar. Then he’ll run and get a freight 
train, and by and by he’ll get off at a little 
small station, and buy a ticket, and they 
won’t never see him again. The brakemens 


68 


Stories from McClure’s 


on a freight train, they mighty good to a 
feller. They feeds you and helps you, too. 
But when you gets to the city, the police¬ 
mens always lookin’ for you on freight 
trains. They don’ never look on passenger 
trains; they don’ think you’d be there. 

So Irish he’s wukin‘ and slavin’ to earn 
his dollar—jest one little dollar. It don’ 
seem so little there, though; it’s mighty big. 
They ain’t scarcely no way to get it. But 
Irish he’s makin’ boxes for fellers who’s 
got some money, to send home to their folks, 
and he’s holdin’ hosses and all such as that. 

Everybody that comes drivin’ up, Irish 
he says: “ Won’t you please lemme hold 
your hoss. Oh, go on, lemme, please.” 

Pretty often they let him. He’s so 
pleadin’ and peaked lookin’. Irish he ain’t 
lookin’ good—he’s jest like a sick feller. 
They looks at him and they say: “ Poh 
boy, poh boy, what’s the matter with you ? ” 

Irish say, “ Oh, nothing much. I jest 
ain’t feelin’ good.” He knows if he says 
what’s the matter with him, he won’t get a 
chance to hold no more. 

Then they used to be some fellers come 


A White Sheep 


69 


out there from the city—awful rich fellers. 
They stops and throws out pennies on the 
ground, and the school fellers, they jumps 
over the picket fence and fights for ’em. 
Irish he used to set there waitin’ for ’em. 
When those rich fellers come along, he say: 
“ Ain’t you goin’ to feed the chickens to¬ 
day?” (That’s what they called it— 
feedin’ the chickens.) “Oh, please, Mister, 
go on. Please do.” 

Then the rich fellers they laughs, and 
throws ’em out some pennies, and the fellers 
all scratch foh ’em—fightin’ jest like cats 
and dogs. Irish, he always gets some. Yes, 
sab, he always does. 

All the time Irish he’s savin’, savin’. 
And all the time he’s lookin’ sicker and 
sicker. That Boss, he’s breakin’ him all 
right, he certainly is. He’s cussin’ him all 
the time, and he’s smashin’ him and he’s 
puttin’ him onto bread and water, some¬ 
times foh two or three days—punishin’ him 
foh things he ain’t never done. When he 
comes out, sometimes he’s kind of tottery on 
his legs. That Boss he laugh. He sa^y: 
“ Ain’t feelin’ so funny as you was, is yer? ” 


7° 


Stories from McClure’s 


Irish he ain’t savin’ a word; he ain’t al¬ 
lowin’ he’s broke yet. But he ain’t feelin’ 
very strong. Sometimes when Boss hits 
him, he falls right over. The Boss he’s hit- 
tin’ other fellers, too. Only not lake he is 
him. 

By and by—after long time—Irish he’s 
got sixty-seven cents. Don’ seem lake he 
ever can get as much’s he wants. He’s 
feelin’ mighty blue. It’s considerable trou¬ 
ble keepin’ money there, too. Oh, they 
stealin’ all the time out there. There’s one 
feller, named Hen’ Vestry—he’s regular 
thief—gets up at night and goes feelin’, 
feelin’ round you clothes. You can’t keep 
nothin’. ’Tain’t no good to him, neither. 
He ain’t in fust or second grade—he can’t 
go outside the yard to spend it. He jest 
can’t help it. By and by one feller comes 
to Irish: “ Say, make me a box; I’ll give 
you twenty-five cents.” 

Irish tickled to death; he makes the box 
right away. Then he gets his money. He 
never was so glad. He’s whistlin’ and 
singin’ to himself. He’s goin’ next evenin’. 
The fellers is sniggin’ bread and meat from 
dinner so’s he can have somethin’ to eat. 


A White Sheep 


7* 


Then Mike Finnegan gets back at him. 
That very next mornin’ a feller wakes up. 
“ Who stole my quarter? ” Yes, sah, some¬ 
body’s been stealin’ from him. 

Then the Boss he say: “ Who stole that 
feller’s money ? ” 

“ I dunno.” 

“ I dunno.” 

Then he always stan’ ’em up in a row and 
he look through ’em—^through all their 
pockets and the linin’ of their coats—lake 
that—and by and by, he find a little hard 
bunch. Oh, he always finds it; I dunno 
how ’tis—he always does. But this time 
when they all stan’s up, he don’t have to do 
it. Mike Finnegan, he say: “ I know who 
stole that money ? ” 

“ Who did?” 

“ That feller ”—pointin’ at Irish—“ I 
wakes up in the night and sees him.” (He 
knows Irish has got some money.) 

Then Boss he say, “ Come hyar.” Then 
he look all through him, and he finds his 
money. “ Look hyar, you, how’d you get 
that money ? ” 

“ I earned it.” 

“ You lie, you stole it.” 


72 


Stories from McClure’s 


Boss say to feller that lost his money: 
“ Hyar you, come get you quarter.” Then 
he give it to him. 

“ Irish ” he say: “ You stealin’ from me.” 
He’s awful pale and white. 

“ You shut up,” Boss says, smashin’ him. 

Then he say: “ Anybody else had his 
money stole ? ” 

“ No, sah.” 

“ No, sah.” 

Then Boss say: “ Guess I’ll keep this here 
till I finds where it come from. Got any¬ 
thin’ more? ” he say. Then he looks through 
the linin’ of his coat. 

“What’s that?” 

“Tain’t nothin’.” 

Then the Boss takes it out. “ What’s 
this ? ” It’s a little round thing—one of 
these little lockets—all gold—and inside 
there’s a piece of kind of yeller hair. 

“ That’s my locket,” says Irish. “ You 
give me that; you ain’t got no right to it. 
Give it back to me.” 

“ Where’d you get that ? ” 

“ I always had it.” 

“ You liar; you stole it before you come 


A White Sheep 


73 


here. I’m goin’ to keep it till I finds out 
who it belongs to.” 

Then Irish he fights for it, and the Boss 
smashes him. He smashes him awful with 
his fist. Irish he falls right over—he’s 
fainted away. 

Boss say: “ Get up, there,” and he kicks 
him with his foot. 

Irish he don’t move. 

“ He’s dead,” says one feller. 

The Boss he’s scared. He say: “ Shut up. 
Go get some water. Hurry up.” 

But Irish he ain’t dead. By and by he 
comes to, and they puts him to bed. 

Hen’ Vestry—that thievin’ feller—he’s 
so tickled, he ’most bust laughin’. The fel¬ 
lers say: “ What you laughin’ at ? ” 

“ Oh, I dunno. I was ’fraid he’d come 
and take my quarter away from me.” 

“ Where’d you get any quarter ? ” 

“ I had it given to me.” 

“ Aw, go on.” 

They knows better. Only ’tain’t no use to 
say nothin’. 

I sleeps right close up to Irish that time. 
All that night he’s kind of cryin’ to himself. 


74 Stories from McClure’s 

“Say, Irish,” I says, “what’s matter? 
What’s matter ? ” 

“ He’s gone stole my locket. Now I can’ 
find my folks, never. Oh, what’ll I do? 
What’ll I do?” 

Next day he say: “ I’m goin’, anyhow. I 
can’ stan’ it. I jest got to go, he’s killin’ 
me.” 

The fellers they’re runnin’ away all the 
time them days; they can’ stand it. Long 
toward night time, when the fellers go in 
from the yard, they jest slips behind the 
door and stays outside. Then the Boss calls 
the names. 

“ Where’s that feller? ” 

“ I dunno.” 

“ I dunno.” 

Um-hum, he’s gone. 

Yes, sah, that evenin’ Irish he run away. 
All that night they looks foh him. There’s 
a feller there named Mr. Fox don’t do 
nothin’ else only look foh boys. Oh, he’s 
suah. They don’t get awav from him. Fust 
he telegraph all round. Then sometimes he 
goes after ’em: and sometimes all dav long 
he jest stan’ there by the gate with his spy- 


A White Sheep 


75 


glass—jest lake that—lookin', lookin’. By 
and by he sees a little thing ’way off—jest 
lake a little pin walkin’. Then they goes 
and catches the feller and brings him back. 
Mr. Fox, he gets five dollars for every boy 
he catches—say, ten boys he gets ten five 
dollars. Oh, he’s rich. 

It don’t take him long to find Irish. Next 
day he comes bringin’ him back. They 
catch him on a freight train. He’s lookin’ 
worse’n ever. You wouldn’t know him, he 
looks so bad. He’s all mud and dirt and his 
clothes is all torn. He’s sick. Boss he don’ 
lick him much. He don’ dare to. 

But Irish he don’ care. He jest sets 
around with his head down, mopin’, mopin’. 
He’s most broke this time. Out there to 
school fellers gets that way sometimes— 
nothin’ ails ’em much; they jest mopin’, 
mopin’ all the time. Then after a while they 
don’ never get well; they dies. Irish he’s 
that way ’most a week. He don’ care; he’s 
done for anyhow. 

But one day he’s standin’ out in the yard, 
and a big carriage drives up and a gran’ 
lady gets out—all dressed in black. Irish 


76 


Stories from McClure’s 


he wants to hoi’ the hosses. He’s got used 
to holdin’ ’em; he likes it. 

Lady say: “ Poor boy, poor boy, how sick 
you lookin’. What’s the matter ? ” 

“ Oh, nothin’. I’m all right.” 

Then she kisses him. Yes, sah, right 
there. She’s got tears in her eyes. She say: 
“ Poh boy, ain’t you got no home but this ? ” 

“ No’m.” 

She’s holding his hand a minute and he’s 
looking at her. Jest a minute. Then he 
runs away in back where nobody’s goin’ to 
see him, and cries some up against side of 
building. Nobody ain’t never kissed out 
there to school. Probably it makes Irish 
feel mighty queer. He ain’t very strong 
anyhow. 

Some fellow sees him out there. “ Hey, 
fellers, come hyar and look at Irish.” 

Irish he turns roun’ mighty quick. “ You 
lemme alone. I’ll break you back if you 
don’.” 

Lady she’s gone inside and seen ol’ su- 
p’inten’ant. 

“ I los’ my little boy last year. He died. 
My husband, he’s died too. Peoples in 





A White Sheep 


77 


city say maybe they’d be a good boy here 
I could take home with me.” 

Or sup’inten’ant smile and say: “ Yes’m, 
yes’m, yes’m. I’ll have ’em brought in; 
then you can see ’em foh yourself.” 

Then he brings ’em all in and stands ’em 
all up in a row. The lady she’s there. Oh, 
she’s beautiful—white, jest lake a lily, with 
black cloth hangin’ down by her face. An’ 
she’s dressed gran’, jest lake some of the 
ladies in the play. Any feller’s mighty 
lucky that goes with her, I tell yer. 

Ol’ sup’inten’ant he says to her: “ This 
here’s our little flock ”—he always talks 
lake that when they’s visitors. “ Pretty 
lively boys, but pretty good boys, too. Ain’t 
you, boys ? ” 

“ Yes, sah.” 

“ Yes, sah.” 

Then he laughs silly. 

“ They lake it here. They gets good food, 
and they’s treated first-class. We never 
strike our boys. It’s ’gainst the rules.” He 
always talks lake that—kind of sweet- 
lake.” 

Then the lady, she’s lookin’ all round at 


7 8 


Stories from McClure’s 


all the boys. She don’ seem to find what 
she wants. Then she say: “ Where’s that 
little boy I saw out in the yard. I don’ see 
him hyar.” 

“ Who’s that, boys ? ” says ol’ sup’inten’- 
ant. 

“ Irish,” says two or three fellers. 

Irish was ’way in back. They makes a 
hole so they can see him, and he comes out. 

“ That’s the little boy,” lady says. 

“ I don’ believe you want that boy,” says 
ol’ sup’inten’ant. “ He’s been a pretty bad 
one since he come here.” 

“ That ain’t so. I don’ never have no 
show hyar,” says Irish. 

The lady’s lookin’ at him. She seems to 
kind o’ lake him. She don’ take no notice 
of what ol’ sup’inten’ant says—jes’ lake she 
don’ hyar him. 

“ He’s got a nice face,” she says, kind 
of under her breath lake. “ Come hyar, 
little boy. What’s yoh name ? ” 

“ I dunno.” 

“Yoh dunno?” 

“ No’m; I was sick. Ol’ Irish woman had 
me. I remember her, but I don’ remember 



A White Sheep 


79 

no more. I wasn’t her boy, though,” he 
say, tryin’ to stan’ up straight. 

Lady she’s lookin’ at him—lookin’, 
lookin’. 

“ Don’ you remember anything more— 
not jest a little teenty bit?” 

“ I dunno. Seems if I kind o’ remember 
somethin’—a kind o’ big house—and a big 
clock, higher’n my head—and—a great big 
yeller dog—and a lady—seems if—a lady, 
with big eyes, kind o’ smilin’—somethin’ 
lake you, she looks—and—and—I guess 
that’s all.” 

“ Poh boy, poh boy,” lady says, “ prob’ly 
that’s you’ mother. Couldn’t you never 
find her ? ” 

“ No’m, maybe she’s dead.” 

“ Ain’t you got nothin’ to remember by ? ” 

“ No’m, not now. I did have my locket 
befoh they took it away from me.” 

“Where is it? Who took it?” 

“ He did, that man there. He’s got it 
now, wearin' it on his watch-chain.” 

“ Sah, bring that boy’s locket hyar.” 

He brings it over mighty quick. Lady 
she looks at it and looks at it. “ Poh boy,” 


8o 


Stories from McClure’s 


she say, “ poh boy. Jest nothin’ but a 
common gold locket, with nothin’ in it but 
some hair. I’m ’fraid you won’t never find 
your mother with that.” 

Then foh a moment they didn’t say 
nothin’; she was thinkin’. 

Then Irish says, kind of soft lake, lookin’ 
at her: “ I wish you’d been my mother.” 

Then all at once he can’t stan’ it; he’s 
cryin’ to her and catching hold of her hand. 

“ Oh, don’ leave me; please don’ leave 
me. Take me with you, please do. I’ll do 
anything foh you, I will. I’ll work and slave 
and die for you if you wants me to. Only 
don’ leave me. Jest try me—only once. 
You don’ have to keep me if you don’ want 
to. You can sen’ me back.” 

The lady, she’s down on her knees in 
front of him, sort of crying. 

“You poh little motherless boy!” she 
says, “ I will take you. It will be better 
foh both of us.” 

Then Irish, he’s jes’ hanging onto her 
and cryin’, and they sends us all out of the 
room. 

When we was goin’ out Hen’ Vestry, he 


A White Sheep 


81 


try to steal that gol’ locket she’s dropped 
there on the floor. Every feller round kicks 
him and punches him and makes him throw 
it down again. 

Jest right after that they drives out of 
there in their gran’ carriage. They don’ 
stop at all. The beautiful lady’s in the back 
seat, and Irish’s sittin’ right up close to her 
and kind of smilin’. The old sup’inten’ant’s 
standin’ in the door-way, and bowin’, and 
tryin’ to look sweet; and all the boys jest 
hollerin’ their heads off. Irish, he’s got 
through. 

Sometimes he comes back after that and 
sees us. He’s drivin’ in a team with the 
lady; or he’s ridin’ on his hoss. He’s got 
a hoss of his own. Oh, he’s awful rich fel¬ 
ler. He’s good feller, too. He don’ forget. 
He’s done an awful lot for other fellers. 
Yes, sah, he has—that’s right. 

The colored youth’s tongue had run 
down. His story was done. “ He started the 
big investigation, didn’t he?” said I. 

“ Yes, sah, that’s right; he was the fel¬ 
ler. Right after that they began investiga- 


82 


Stories from McClure’s 


tionin’. 01’ sup’inten’ant and Boss, I guess 
they’re mighty sorry they licked that feller. 
They don’ lick no other fellers, they don’; 
they gets right out of there after they’ve 
investigationed ’em. ’Tain’t lake it was 
over ther’; no, sah. 

“ It’s mighty different. They got a new 
sup’inten’ant and new Boss and everythin’.” 

“ I guess you boys were mighty glad that 
fellow was sent to school,” said I. 

“ Yes, sah, we was. It’s the best thing 
ever happened to that school. They ain’t no 
doubt ’bout that. You ought to been there 
the last time ol’ sup’inten’ant and Boss went 
away.” 

“ Did the boys holler ? ” 

“Did they holler. Oh, no, I guess not. 
You could hear ’em most a mile, I bet yer. 
Yes, sah—more’n that—ten times more.” 


A Tune in Court 




















A TUNE IN COURT 


A STORY OF THE ITALIAN QUARTER IN 
SAN FRANCISCO 

By Marion Hill 

I NASMUCH as little Tino Trevino, in 
his daily social and commercial deal¬ 
ings with the San Francisco public, 
was hailed indifferently as a “ dago,” 
“ greaser,” “ Eytalian,” or “ Portugee ” 
kid, it is evident to any intelligence - that the 
child was a foreigner. It is not so evident, 
however, why the grubby and solemn-eyed 
infant should have been considered of 
enough importance to engage the attention 
of the municipal government; but he was. 
Tinto, five-year-old, reticent, hungry Tinto, 
was arrested for being a public nuisance. 
This to the Trevinos was more than a 

85 


86 


Stories from McClure’s 


family grief; it was also a financial horror, 
for Tinto contributed appreciably to an in¬ 
come already miserably insufficient for a 
family that was outrageous as to numbers. 
In addition to Tinto and Tinto’s father, 
Luis, and Tinto’s mother, Tessa, there were 
brothers and sisters as follows: Stefano, 
Senta, Catalina, Rafael, Tonio, Anita, Marta, 
Jose, Doretta, and Maria—all undersized, 
underfed, greasy, scowling, garlicky, and 
clannish. Tessa once, when called upon to 
reconcile her youth with her indisputable 
motherhood of the brood, explained that she 
had had “ T’ree-a to one time, two-a to one 
time, and one-a, oh, ever so many time.” 

This sentence was given with the villain¬ 
ous scowl of suffering which English 
brought to every Trevino countenance. 
They were so ignorant of the language that 
they dreaded it like a scourge; the scowl, 
though purely a linguistic manoeuver, preju¬ 
diced observers against the Trevino char¬ 
acter. 

Besides the English language (and luck), 
another foe to the Trevino peace of mind 
was an ill-disposed countryman of theirs 


A Tune in Court 


87 


whose last name was Zanardi. His first 
names are too holy to write, being those of 
the Divine Son and the blessed Mother; but 
Zanardi had them emblazoned in full in red 
letters on his yellow vegetable cart, and 
made the offense greater by his own daily 
life, which was of a nature calculated to 
bring reproach even upon the name of the 
Prince of Evil. 

Zanardi, who had caused the arrest of 
baby Tinto, had harassed the Trevinos ever 
since that frightened bunch first set emi¬ 
grant foot upon Californian soil, led by 
some ill fate to rent a shanty next to his in 
that unsavory foreign quarter of San Fran¬ 
cisco known loosely as “ Spanish Town.” 
His only reason for persecution lay in the 
fact that he was a born bully, and the cow¬ 
ering inoffensiveness of the Trevinos was 
an irresistible temptation to him; then, too, 
they were trying to buy their shanty, and 
such thriftiness offended Zanardi’s sense of 
what was proper in a Trevino. 

He was really clever in his enmity, and 
kept safely out of the reach of the law by 
making the law itself perform his dirty 


88 


Stories from McClure’s 


work for him. The law has peculiar facili¬ 
ties for punishing the unoffender. A gar¬ 
den-hose can be turned upon a weak and 
thirsty plant so as to wash it into the dirt. 
For instance, when the Trevinos had gath¬ 
ered together a few sticks of furniture, 
Zanardi set the tax-collector upon them, and 
the ignorant wretches assented to so much 
English that they did not understand that 
they were assessed five times too much, and 
were fined for delinquency besides. 

Then two little Trevinos, the two-a-to- 
one-timers, broke out in pimples due to lack 
of nutrition, and Zanardi promptly herded 
the whole flock of Trevinos to the new City 
Hall, and had the Board of Health vaccinate 
them, resulting from which their arms 
swelled out and hurt them and kept them 
helpless for weeks, thus stopping the final 
payments upon the cottage. 

Luckless Rafael’s arm communicated 
pimples to the rest of his body, so Zanardi 
once more strenuously raised the cry of 
small-pox, in consequence of which *he 
mortgaged Trevino shanty was quaran¬ 
tined, and then fumigated to the total de- 


A Tune in Court 89 

struction of all belongings that had escaped 
being condemned and burned. 

Next, when Zanardi thought that Luis 
had become enough of an American citizen 
to vote, he had him vote industriously three 
or four times at the one election, and upon 
his information there followed an elegant 
seance about illegal registration, and Luis 
was reprimanded and imprisoned and fined 
and kept in so much hot water that a whole 
cargo of bananas went bad on his hands, 
not being sold in time. To ripen those ba¬ 
nanas, Tessa and brood had nightly taken 
the bunches to bed with them, as is the cus¬ 
tom of fruit peddlers; and when Tessa was 
worried into brain fever by Luis’s difficul¬ 
ties with the ballot, Zanardi confided to the 
public the trick of trade in fruit-ripening, 
had Trevino’s stock condemned as infected, 
and thereby killed the Trevino banana in¬ 
dustry forever. 

Then the School Board was induced to 
investigate why the Trevino children were 
not kept at school, with the result that they 
were taken from lucrative trades and put 
into infant classes, where they twined their 


9° 


Stories from McClure’s 


long legs around desks too small for them, 
sat all day making queer marks upon slates, 
scowled darkly at an uncomprehended, un¬ 
comprehending teacher, and never by any 
chance learned anything. When Stefano 
took a day off to nurse his wrath, and 
sought the water-front to do it privately, 
not to worry his parents with his own cares, 
the truant officer was sent after him; and 
there followed another dismal seance in still 
another department of the City Hall. 

Tinto was too young to suffer at the 
hands of any School Board, so Zanardi ex¬ 
ercised special ingenuity and hurt him in a 
child’s most vulnerable feelings—through a 
pet animal. The very rich and the very 
poor have one blessed privilege in common 
—both can afford to keep a dog: those in 
merely comfortable circumstances cannot 
stand the expense. Tinto had a puppy, a 
big, rollicking slob, so good-tempered that 
he got fat on a diet visibly consisting only 
of sunshine and the affectionate mouthings 
he gave the children. The puppy made a 
friendly run at Zanardi one day, catching 
playfully at his moving boot, and the Italian 


A Tune in Court 


9 1 


(after some personal treatment in his own 
room) came out lacerated around the ankle, 
showed the “ wounds ” to the police, and the 
officer shot the dog before Tinto’s eyes. 
The moan of the pup and the shriek of the 
child made music acceptable to J. M. 
Zanardi. 

So much cannot be said of the music 
which came from Tinto’s violin. That 
music was a source of annoyance to the 
enemy, for from it came many nickels to the 
small player. Could the law hold out no 
remedy? It could. Tinto could be arrested 
for disturbing the peace, and being a nui¬ 
sance—which brings us back to where we 
started. 

When, in answer to the charge, they all 
filed into a court-room of the New City 
Hall on that foggy December morning, the 
Trevinos presented anything but an engag¬ 
ing appearance. They all came—Luis and 
Tessa, Senta, Catalina, Anita, Marta, Do- 
retta, Maria, Jose, Stefano, Rafael, Tonio, 
and, of course, Tinto—and they came shiv¬ 
ering and scowling, the skirted members 
darkly muffled in greasy head-shawls, 


92 


Stories from McClure’s 


whence their eyes gleamed like those of 
cats; the trousered portion with dirty hands 
deep in frayed pockets, and still greasier 
collars pulled high up around swarthy 
necks; and they looked like an assassins’ 
chorus in a Tivoli opera. Zanardi, on the 
contrary, sleek as a panther, was the em¬ 
bodiment of Italian grace. His face was as 
open as day, and when he smiled it was 
like sunshine, and his teeth gleamed like 
pearls. 

It is no wonder that the desperate Tre¬ 
vinos had not enough interest in life even 
to wash. Ruin is ruin, whether the money 
involved be reckoned in millions of dollars 
or in a handful of dimes. In losing their 
shanty and banana trade, the Trevinos 
were more destitute than the word “ bank¬ 
ruptcy ” has any power to suggest: they 
might as well all cut their throats and leave 
the rest to the coroner. It is beyond the 
power of onlookers to estimate the horror of 
tragedy hourly going on in our im¬ 
ported population. Out of the droves 
of ignorantly hopeful people who come 
herding over to us, their souls glow- 


A Tune in Court 


93 


mg not only with impossible fancies 
of wealth and power to come, but with 
equally preposterous expectation of present 
welcome, only a rare few gain independence, 
while the rest slave and suffer, sicken, die, 
and rot to form an awful human fertilizer 
for the land they came to share. The animal 
hunger and desperation shining from their 
eyes appeal to us merely as an unpleasant, 
but inalienable, attribute of the “ lower 
classes,” not at all as the signs of the death 
struggle of a lonely brother man. Loneli¬ 
ness fills as many graves as whisky. The 
loneliness of Italians in California is piti¬ 
ful : they come with notions of placer min¬ 
ing in their back yards and cultivating 
grapes in their front yards, with the presi¬ 
dency always hopefully within reach. In 
San Francisco, the situation is worse on ac¬ 
count of the climate. Few people under¬ 
stand how emphatically San Francisco is 
not California. The confirmed San Fran¬ 
ciscan knows less about the Golden State 
than any Pueblo Indian baby. San Fran¬ 
cisco, within an hour's journey of a torrid 
belt, is never hot; San Francisco, within 


94 


Stories from McClure’s 


sight of snow-clad peaks, is seldom frigid; 
San Francisco is cool, breezy, and foggy. 
To an Eskimo it is Hades; to an Italian it 
is perpetual winter. 

The Trevinos, as they shivered in court 
on that gray December morning, bore in 
their gloomy eyes a history of pain—grief 
for their lost South, suffering for their 
present predicament, and fear for the hun¬ 
gry, disgraced, and homeless to-morrow. 
Small wonder that the history expressed it¬ 
self in scowls and slinking ferocity. The 
Trevinos hated everything they saw. They 
especially abominated a eucalyptus tree 
which grew outside the City Hall and 
clashed its cruel leaves against the court¬ 
room window. An abominable tree is the 
eucalyptus. Its dark, sickle-shaped leaves 
saw against each other with the rasping of 
knives. Moreover, they have the power of 
condensing mist into rain. On a foggy day 
every eucalyptus drips an incessant down¬ 
pour. The tree outside the court-room 
window was behaving with more than usual 
nastiness, contorting itself, wringing its 
arms, clashing its noisy leaves, and weeping 


A Tune in Court 


95 

with vulgar abandon, throwing the mist 
from it in a steady shower of cold tears. 

Not the Trevinos alone suffered from its 
depressing influence: all the court clientele, 
Christmas not a fortnight off, was in an 
especially holiday humor—this with adults 
means of course, discontent, a sneering re¬ 
membrance of (and sorrowing for) child' 
ish dead joys, contempt for the empty pres¬ 
ent, and disgust for the coming ordeal of 
taking and giving gifts. God pity the 
wretches who come before a judge when he 
is in a holiday humor. 

Next to the advent of Christmas, what 
most soured his Honor was the presence in 
the court-room of a large number of med¬ 
ical students: young men of prevailing 
pallor of complexion, most of them gone 
wildly to beard, and all smelling of anti¬ 
septic soap, which, though cleanly enough 
in itself, has unpleasant suggestions in the 
background. These young men had just 
come from an examination of some disease 
corpuscles, beautifully mounted on glass 
slides and kindly on microscopic view in 
the rooms of the Board of Health, and they 


9 6 


Stories front McClure’s 


had obtained permission to use the court¬ 
room as a means of studying how the ex¬ 
halations of crime vitiate the atmosphere, 
or something of the sort. At any rate, 
there they were, and their obtrusion was 
another prejudicial factor in the Trevino 
case. 

Indeed, as Zanardi cited his wrongs, no 
sane judge could do anything but believe 
him to be an injured party. 

“ All-a time, ever since Trevinos they 
come next-a door, they have injure my 
property, and be evil-minded to me, and set 
on their dog to me,” wailed J. M., his 
handsome eyes flashing eloquently. “ From 
how they look darkly on me, you can see 
how much-a hate they have of me; but all 
those things is nothings to me, so long as 
they leave to me my quiet to sleep so that I 
get strong to work next day. But no, no! 
Me and my wife and all in my house have 
our heads distracted with fiddle, fiddle, all-a 
time fiddle, until we no know nothings no 
more. My poor wife, my poor Nella, she 
much-a too sick to come to-day-” 

“ He lie! ” called Tessa, desperately. 



A Tune in Court 


97 

“ Nella, she home iron out a shu’t waist. I 
see her.” 

“ Silence! ” thundered his Honor, not 
more to Tessa than to the medicos, who had 
enjoyed immensely the feminine outburst. 

“ No lie,” softly denied the long-suffer¬ 
ing Zanardi, in patient dignity. “ Every 
day Nella grow weak’ and weak’. Fiddle 
next door all day and all night. Never to 
sleep makes a very nervous woman, and 
Nella she so much unsettle she can no 
longer take in wash, and can only go 
around hold on to her head, and moan— 
oh, how she moan for rest! Me myself 
find it a big burden to have that sound of 
fiddle all-a time within my head. Many 
peoples can tell how much that small Tinto 
can fiddle even in one day and a night.” 

Which “ many peoples ” immediately 
proceeded to do. There was no lack of 
witnesses to prove how undesirable were the 
Trevinos as neighbors; how uncleanly, 
given to accumulating loathsome diseases; 
how unpatriotic and uneducational, but es¬ 
pecially inconsiderate in the persistency 
with which they incited Tinto to untimely 


9 8 


Stories from McClure’s 


practice of noisome tunes upon a discordant 
fiddle. They prayed not only for abate¬ 
ment, but for absolute prohibition of the 
baneful scraping. 

“ The wonder is, why Luis has this hate of 
me, who but wish him well,” mourned Za- 
nardi, “ who have been his friend from the 
first, but it is a true proverb that who 
smears himself with honey will be pestered 
by the flies. I can stand no more, and I 
pray that Luis will be made not to set Tinto 
to scrape that fiddle when most Luis thinks 
I am sick and in need of sleep.” 

“ Have you anything to say ? ” demanded 
the judge of Luis. 

Knowing well what he had to say, and 
saying it, Luis did for himself. He ex¬ 
pressed a wish that some Jew might spit on 
the grave of Zanardi’s grandmother, and 
promised that he, Luis, would ere long 
smash in Zanardi’s face. There is an ex¬ 
cuse for him. Ignorant as he was of Eng¬ 
lish, he yet divined intuitively that the whole 
case, against him from the first, was settled 
irrevocably in the mind of the judge, and 
would come shortly to a conviction and 



A Tune in Court 


99 


costs. It was equivalent to a death sen¬ 
tence: and a dying man does not quibble 
with words. What Luis said he meant. 
His whole family meant it, too, for, with 
the same intuition, they divined the situa¬ 
tion as well as he, and every Trevino face 
was one malignant scowl. 

No, not every face. Tinto, bored long 
ago with proceedings which seemed to have 
nothing to do with him in spite of the fre¬ 
quent occurrence of his name, was examin¬ 
ing with placid interest a glass paper¬ 
weight upon the judge’s desk. The better 
to do it, he had wandered into the center of 
the room, where he stood in unconscious 
prominence, hugging his violin under his 
arm as a girl might hug a doll. 

This unvexed vision gave the judge an 
idea. “Here, you Tinto, play something! 
Show us what sort of a nuisance you are. 
Understand ? Fiddle! Scrape! Give us 
tune. Sabe? ” 

Tinto turned immense eyes from the 
judge to his father, much as he would ap¬ 
peal from an idiot to an interpreter, and 
Luis said something in Italian. 

L.ofC. 


IOO 


Stories from McClure’s 


The child, looking more like a wee ma¬ 
hogany god than anything human, turned 
his assenting orbs again upon the judge,' 
and commenced to tune his violin, doing it 
with what looked like unembarrassed 
leisure, but was in reality infinite love and 
patience. 

The embryo doctors leaned back with the 
complacency of those who have front seats 
at the minstrels. The judge had an angry 
expectation of being assailed with the 
strains of a popular song, with a chorus 
demanding that all who had heard should 
“ Bone dat turkey, brudders, bone dat tur¬ 
key !” 

Tinto let his slow gaze wander around 
the court-room for inspiration. He reject¬ 
ed the sad picture of his kinspeople, the 
smiling doctors, a curious throng of outsid¬ 
ers at the doors, the unfriendly court, the 
lonely tree that wept against the window- 
pane and writhed against a background of 
sullen sky, and fixing his yearning eyes 
finally upon the crystal bauble which had 
chained his fancy—the beautiful, ever-un- 
attainable iridescence of that fairv-like 


A Tune in Court 


IOI 


plaything—he sighed deeply, and then took 
route for fairyland itself upon the bridge¬ 
like, golden, vibrating notes of Schumann’s 
“ Traumerei,” the dream song of dream 
songs. 

Perhaps he looked further than the bit of 
glass, and saw in his pathetic day-dream 
those other glittering shams for which, in 
the coming years, he would barter the music 
of his man’s soul—the woman’s smile, the 
crown of fame, the shine of gold, the hearts 
of his friends. Whatever it was, it spoke 
with a moving sweetness, and the court¬ 
room was filled with music of such awful 
tenderness and strength that it seemed ab¬ 
surd to connect it with so small a perform¬ 
er, who guided a tiny bow with the grimy 
fingers of a baby. 

Like the flight of a bird that reaches high 
places; like the unexpectedness of an earth¬ 
quake shock which reveals God to us; like 
the fragrance of a flower that steals unbid¬ 
den upon our senses; like a baby’s velvet 
touch which thrills our beings with divine 
tenderness, the music of the Dream Song 
floated through the court-room and held the 


102 


Stories from McClure’s 


listeners spellbound. Sweet as it was, yet 
hand in hand it went with pain; for what 
is there for us but sorrow when we dream 
dreams of what might be and know we 
must waken to the things which are? 

After a first shiver, as from an icy clutch 
at his heart, the judge leaned back and 
seemed less to listen to the music than ut¬ 
terly to disregard it. But he too had crossed 
on that golden bridge, not to the future 
where Tinto went, but back into a past that 
he had fancied was forgotten. Dreaming, 
dreaming! Ah, dear God, had not all the 
ambitions of his youth been dreams! And 
she—his wife, not the stately woman who 
now bore his name and showed off his 
wealth, but that little dead girl who used to 
bring her violin and play to him when the 
twilight came and the firelight danced over 
the bare room that was home to them—had 
not she in her hopes and prophecies for him 
been but dreaming, too? This very tune 
was what she mostly played, and the time 
came when she played it with her dreams 
reaching out to fold themselves about a lit¬ 
tle child that was to be theirs, the little boy 


A Tune in Court 


103 

who stayed but long enough to deliver 
God's message that wife and child were 
both to go back to Him. She was in her 
grave, and this tune, that surely was hers 
and hers alone, was going on, beautifully 
insistent, to waken all the laments of his 
lonely soul. 

But at last the music stopped, and the 
small player looked inquiringly at the judge. 

Now it is undeniable that, had the judge's 
previous humor been for “ Bone dat Tur¬ 
key " instead of against it, the “ Trau- 
merei " would have proved Tinto a nuisance 
of virulent type. It is also undeniable, 
though regrettable, that a dead wife has 
more effectiveness as a moral force than a 
living one. And the judge was touched. 
So touched was he, that he dared not look 
up until he had strangled at their birth the 
sobs that threatened to come. It would 
never do to have those prim teachers at the 
doors surprise him at his emotions. 

The teachers were in the building to col¬ 
lect back salaries. In San Francisco, when 
the opening of a street, or a park road, or 
the leveling of a sand hill empties the sen- 


104 


Stories from MeGure’s 


sitive treasury, the deficit can always be 
met by the docking the school-teachers of a 
percentage of salary. Then a new admin¬ 
istration sets in. and, as a politic move, pays 
back a dribble, just enough to insure grate¬ 
ful support. One of these celestial reim¬ 
bursements was being made on the day of 
Tinto* s trial, and his violin had drawn curi¬ 
ously to the court doors a throng of happy 
spinsters, each with a plethoric chatelaine 
bag hanging from her belt and further 
guarded by the clutch of a gloved hand. 

When fortified to meet the examination 
of these sharp feminine eyes, the judge 
raised his head, and his gaze was very 
severe. It softened once when it rested on 
the upturned face of Tinto, but hardened 
doubly when directed upon Zanardi. “Is 
this the music that is driving you dis¬ 
tracted ? ” he demanded in disgust. 

Zanardi misinterpreted the source of dis¬ 
gust. and further committed himself. " Yes. 
yes: just like-a that. Music like-a that, at 
all times Tinto plays.” 

“ Then the best thing Tinto can do for 
you is to keep on playing till you grow able 


A Tune in Court 


io 5 

to appreciate it,” ordered the judge, and 
the medical students drowned his further 
words in a shout of applause. A young 
doctor, especially during the growth of his 
first beard, is invariably a music lover. 

“ Here, you shaver,” called one, “ here's 
a half-dollar to buy yourself a Christmas 
gift. Make it a cake of soap if you can.” 
As he tossed the silver, the infection caught 
his comrades, and all began to search their 
pockets for small coin. 

Tinto thought it his professional duty to 
go around with his hat, court or no court, 
and stoically did so, winding up by besieg¬ 
ing his Honor himself, but giving him a 
wistful look rather of thanks for past favor 
than an appeal for alms. 

“ Isn't he cute? ” whispered the teachers. 
But they did not give him any of their re¬ 
stored salaries. It had come too hard for 
that. 

“ For yourself, Tinto,” murmured his 
Honor, dropping a yellow piece among the 
silver. 

But the poor do not own themselves. 
What they have belongs to the head of the 






































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The Little Boy and His Pa 












THE LITTLE BOY AND 
HIS PA 


THE STORY OF HOW THEY GOT AC¬ 
QUAINTED WITH EACH OTHER 

By Ellsworth Kelley 

T HE little boy and his pa lived on a 
ranch where the short grass ran 
down the slope to meet the elm 
and the hackberry trees along the 
river. He was the only little boy in the 
family; the only child, for that matter. 
His mother thought him the only little 
boy in the world, for she knew him well. 
The little boy and his pa did not have an 
extended acquaintance. His pa was a very 
busy man, whose cattle business took him 
here and there and everywhere a great deal 


hi 


11 2 


Stories from McClure’s 


of the time. So the little boy did not see 
him every day, and when he did see him 
it was usually at meal time. When at 
home, sometimes his pa would say: “ Come, 
little boy, wake up if you want to eat break¬ 
fast with your pa and ma.” 

And the little boy would answer, “ I’m 
getting dressed, pa/’ 

At noon his pa would say: “ Come, little 
boy, wash your face, and comb your hair, 
and be sure you act nice at the table.” 

The little boy would reply: “Yes, sir.” 

At night when the clock struck nine his 
pa would say: “ Now, little boy, it’s bed¬ 
time for folks of your size.” 

Then the little boy would kiss his ma, 
and call “ Good-night, pa! ” as he went up¬ 
stairs to bed. 

So their acquaintance stood till one Sep¬ 
tember day when the little boy was ten 
years old. That day his pa took the little 
boy with him to the countv-seat. That day 
the little boy and his pa got acquainted with 
each other. It was a Kansas September 
morning. This sentence will sufficiently 
describe it to all who have passed a Sep- 


tember in the short-grass country. Words 
cannot convey an adequate description to 
others. They rode along in silence for a 
while. The little boy had never been to the 
county-seat, and his imagination was busy 
with the farther end of the journey. By 
and by he fell to counting the herds of cat¬ 
tle grazing on the short-grass. He enjoyed 
the changing landscape. The quails whis¬ 
tled from the brown corn-fields. Some¬ 
where back on the uplands the prairie chick¬ 
ens were drumming their sunrise march. 
He viewed with intense enjoyment the tag 
game of a village of prairie dogs. He 
watched a coyote in pursuit of a jack-rab¬ 
bit. But even upon the soul of a child im¬ 
pressions of sound and sight will sometimes 
pall. Then the little boy all unconscious of 
what he was doing, began to let his pa get 
acquainted with him. “ Pa, do you remem¬ 
ber when you were a little boy—a ten-year- 
old boy—like me ? ” 

The vision of a barefoot boy with trou¬ 
sers rolled up to his knees, fishing for chubs 
and goggle-eyes in the old Spring branch— 
so many years ago—flitted before the fath- 


114 Stories from McClure’s 

er’s mental vision as he replied: “Well, 
yes, my son, I remember quite well.” 

“ What was your name when you were a 
little boy? Your boy name, you know, that 
the other fellows called you by ? ” 

“ Tommy. Your grandma called me 
‘ Tommy Taylor/ But the boys I used to 
run with called me ‘ Pony *—‘ Pony Tay¬ 
lor/ Sometimes they’d turn my name 
around, and call me ‘ Taylor’s Pony.’ ” 

“ What did they call you ‘ Pony ’ for ? ” 
“ Oh, I guess it was because I was a 
great, big, overgrown boy.” 

The little boy caught the spirit of the 
irony, and laughed outright. He was silent 
for a while, and then he began putting his 
father through a little boy’s catechism. 
“ Pa, did you ever play ‘ scrub ’ ? ” 

“Scrub? What’s that?” 

“ Oh, it’s a game something like base¬ 
ball that you play when there isn’t enough 
fellows there to make nine on a side.” 

“ When I was a boy—when I was Pony 
Taylor—we played town ball, and if we 
hadn’t enough on one side, why, we gave 
that side a ‘ blind eye/ ” 


The Little Boy and his Pa 


IX 5 


“ Blind eye! What’s a blind eye?” 

“ Oh, it’s just letting the first fellow out 
on a side play again.” 

“ I see now. That made the sides even, 
didn’t it? But did you ever play humper- 
down or foot-an’-a-half or high jump or 
put the shot ? ” 

“ Well, not by those names. We used to 
play hop-step-and-a-jump, bull-pen, and 
old three-cornered cat.” 

“ Do you know what an alley or taw is ? ” 

“ Sure! I’ll never forget them.” 

Another short silence. The little boy 
was thinking. “ Pa, can’t you tell me 
something—something funny—that hap¬ 
pened—when you were a little boy ? ” 

“ Let me see! Well, I remember some¬ 
thing that I thought was pretty funny when 
it happened, and it got still funnier as I 
thought about it in school time.” 

“ What was it?” 

“ It wasn’t anything much.” His pa hes¬ 
itated a moment before telling it, for he did 
not know the little boy well enough to be 
certain that he would be able to appreciate 
what, to him, was the ludicrous feature of 



n6 Stories from McClure’s 

the story. Then he began: “ There was a 
little boy in our school that called himself 
the ‘ Boss/ He was a great big hulk of a 
fellow, and most of the boys were small, 
for it was a summer term. If we played 
war, he was the captain. If we played 
horse, he was the driver. Well, one day 
he had a whole lot of us fellows pulling a 
sled of rocks from one part of the yard to 
the other. We had a hedge pole tied to the 
sled for a tongue, and each of us took hold 
of the pole with one hand and pulled. All 
at once he took a notion that he would be a 
horse, and he took my place and made me 
be driver. 

“ I soon saw what he was about. He was 
going to be the meanest horse ever hitched 
up. He reared and pranced and plunged 
and knocked the rest of the horses right and 
left. I cracked him one with the whip, 
and he kicked; and when he kicked, he 
struck his bare foot on a hedge thorn and 
tore it pretty badly, and then that unman¬ 
ageable horse just sat down and howled! 
After school took up, I got to thinking 
about it, and I laughed right out. The 


The Little Boy and his Pa 


117 

teacher brought me out on the floor and 
when she asked what I was laughing at, I 
told her I had thought of something funny. 
She said that she thought of something fun¬ 
ny, too, and she took me over and set me 
between two girls. Then I cried. ,, 

The little boy laughed delightedly and 
said, “ I’ve never had to sit with girls.” 

There was another mile sped over before 
the little boy spoke again. “ Pa, when you 
went fishing, what did you use for bait— 
good bait, you know ? ” 

“ Angle-worms to catch goggle-eyes, and 
minnows for bass. I fished for goggle- 
eyes mostly.” 

“ Pa, do you think it does any good to 
spit on bait ? ” 

His pa considered carefully before an¬ 
swering; then he said that, when he was a 
boy, it was so believed by all fishermen. 

“ Well, that’s what I think, though I 
don’t exactly see why. But Billy Mullins 
catches more fish than any of us fellows, 
and he says the reason is because he always 
spits on his bait. Say, pa, did you ever go 
swimming the whole afternoon? Just 



Stories from McClure’s 


118 

swim and swim ’til supper-time came, and 
then feel sorry because it was time to go 
home?” 

“ Did I ? I used to be in the long hole of 
Spring branch so much that your grandma 
pretended that she could see scales and fins 
starting to grow on my body.” 

“ Could you dive, and turn handsprings 
off the spring-board, and tread water, and 
lay your hair ? ” 

“ Better than any other boy in the 
crowd.” 

Then the little boy moved close over to 
his father, and said: “ So can I.” 

By and by they came in sight of the 
county-seat. The little boy was surprised 
at its size. He expected it to be larger 
than Taylor’s Corners, which had a school- 
house, a blacksmith shop, and a store where 
they got the mail. But he had not dreamed 
of such a picture as burst upon his sight 
when they reached the hilltop that over¬ 
looked the county-seat. Street after street 
walled in with high houses! Seven church 
steeples! A great two-story school build¬ 
ing! Whole blocks of two and three story 


The Little Boy and his Pa ng 

business houses! It seemed to him like a 
scene out of his pictorial Aladdin which he 
found by his plate on Christmas morning. 
It was after reaching the city that the little 
boy began getting acquainted with his pa. 

“Well, well, Taylor! I’m glad to see 
you. I am indeed. I was just telling my 
wife this morning that I would rather see 
Tom Taylor than any man likely to attend 
the convention. You see, Taylor, I haven’t 
forgotten those three years we spent in the 
mounted infantry, nor how you pulled me 
out of the Johnnies’ hands when I got that 
bullet in my arm at Okolona. Say, those 
Johnnie Rebs were the hot stuff that day, 
weren’t they? And how are you getting 
along, Taylor, and how is the wife; and— 
is this your boy ? ” 

“ Yes—all I’ve got—and he’s a namesake 
of yours, Judge—William Strong Taylor.” 

“You don’t say! Well, well, well! Your 
boy and my namesake! A fine boy, sir, a 
fine boy.” And the judge shook the little 
boy’s awkward right hand—for it was not 
much used to handshaking and worked 
very much indeed like a pump-handle—and 
patted the little boy on the head. 



120 


Stories from McClure’s 


“ You and the little boy will take dinner 
with me to-day, Taylor. We don’t get a 
chance to visit very often, so we’ll just go 
right along down to the house, and talk 
over old times until dinner;” and the judge 
took his pa by the arm, and, holding the 
little boy’s hand, together the three walked 
down the street to the home of the judge. 

So walking, the little boy was face to face 
with the greatest episode of his short life. 
He had known that he was named for the 
great Judge Strong. He had occasionally 
heard his father speak of the judge in terms 
of the highest respect, and the little boy, in 
his boyish way, and grown to think him a 
very great man, only surpassed in greatness 
by the governor himself; and now the judge 
had actually patted him on the head, and 
called him a fine boy; and now they were to 
take dinner with him! Again he thought 
of Aladdin. 

While his pa and the judge were talking 
on the veranda, the little boy sat like some 
little old man, listening to the tales of camp 
life and army hardships; listening until he 
felt that he would have given anything in 
the world—which meant his Aladdin and 



The Little Boy and his Pa 


I 2 I 


his pony, Topsy—to have been old enough 
to have carried a saber and ridden a cav¬ 
alry horse, and to have had a Spencer car¬ 
bine slung across his back. 

At dinner he behaved very well, and said 
“ Yes, sir,” and “ No, ma’am,” and “ If you 
please ” in just the right places, and the 
judge beamed on him with smiles of ap¬ 
proval. He really would have enjoyed an¬ 
other piece of the custard pie, and one more 
spoonful of grape jelly; but he remembered 
his manners, and resolutely declined when 
motherly Mrs. Strong insisted on a second 
helping. 

As they went back down town after din¬ 
ner was over, the little boy was surprised to 
notice how many men knew his pa. They 
all acted as if they were glad to see him, 
and shook hands with him very heartily, 
and called him “ Captain.” Finally they 
reached the Opera House, where the con¬ 
vention was to be held. The little boy 
gazed curiously on the noisy, surging, 
good-natured crowd of delegates and poli¬ 
ticians that filled the room. By and by a 
big man on the stage hammered with a mal- 


122 


Stories from McClure’s 


let on a table, and called the house to order. 
The committee on organization made its re¬ 
port, and named Captain Thomas Taylor 
for chairman. The crowd cheered, and 
adopted the report unanimously. Then 
there were cries of “Taylor! Taylor! 
Speech from Taylor! ” 

The little boy felt proud and sorry all at 
once—proud of the honor that had come to 
his pa, sorry because he was sure his pa 
could not make a speech. He had read 
something of Patrick Henry, and Webster, 
and Henry Clay, and knew that they were 
speech-makers. But he knew that they were 
dead, and he had a vague idea that nobody 
living, certainly nobody in that country, 
could make speeches unless it might be 
preachers and lawyers, or the schoolmaster 
on the last day of school. So when his pa 
stood up before the crowd and bowed, and 
said: “Fellow-citizens and gentlemen of 
the convention/’ the little boy grew very 
pale, and could hear his own heart beat. 

But his pa went right off into a speech 
about the grand old party and the spirit of 
liberty, and about the platform. The little 


The Little Boy and his Pa 123 

boy wondered if he meant the platform 
upon which he was standing. Then his pa 
told a humorous story, and the crowd 
laughed and cheered. He spoke of prison- 
pens and dead heroes, and the little boy saw 
a man draw his coat sleeve across his eyes. 
When his pa had finished his speech, the 
little boy thought the cheering never would 
cease, and he mentally placed his pa in the 
list of men who could make speeches, and 
wondered if some time that speech would 
be placed in a Fifth Reader for boys to 
study at school, along with the speeches of 
Henry and Webster and Clay. 

The convention then proceeded to nomi¬ 
nate the ticket. Finally Judge Strong was 
on his feet making a speech. He was plac¬ 
ing a name before the convention for repre¬ 
sentative. He said he wished to name a 
representative citizen, a man well known 
and held in esteem by all who knew him; a 
man who had marched and fought by the 
judge’s side through the years of the war; 
who now carried in his body the bullets of 
battle and bore upon his breast the scars 
of conflict. He drew a vivid picture of 



124 


Stories from McClure’s 


this man leading his company in a desper¬ 
ate charge at Missionary Ridge, and con¬ 
cluded by saying, “ Gentlemen, I have the 
honor to place before this convention the 
name of Captain Thomas Taylor, of Sum¬ 
mit Township.” 

There were more cheers, and some one 
moved to suspend the rules and make the 
nomination unanimous. Motion carried. 
Captain Thomas Taylor was declared the 
nominee by unanimous vote. The little boy 
could not remember anything like it in his 
story of Aladdin. 

The convention was over, the congratu¬ 
lations of the delegates and others showered 
upon the captain, and then the little boy and 
his pa were on the homeward journey. 
They did not talk much for many miles. 
His pa was busy thinking over the events 
of the day. So was the little boy. The 
sun had gone down. Suddenly the quiet of 
the twilight hour—the great, impressive si¬ 
lence of the plains—was broken by a fusi- 
lade somewhere off in the gathering dark¬ 
ness. Some belated hunters were taking a 
parting shot at a scurrying jack-rabbit. A 



The Little Boy and his Pa 


I2 5 


correlation of ideas inspired the little boy 
to ask: “ Pa, when you were a soldier in 
the war with Judge Strong, did you ever 
kill any one?” 

His pa did not answer at once. In an in¬ 
stant there flashed before his eyes the events 
of a September day in a year long gone. 
Clouds of smoke hung over a battle-field. 
The pungent, nauseous odor of sulphurous 
smoke was in his nostrils. Again he looked 
down a line of blue-coated horsemen sitting 
like statues, each holding a drawn saber. 
The men had grimy faces and tense, set 
jaws. He heard Jack Stevens jest about 
what pretty corpses they would make. An¬ 
other man was softly whistling “ The Girl 
I Left Behind Me.” Dick Saunders cursed 
the whistler, and some of the boys laughed. 
A blast of the bugle cut through the smoke¬ 
laden air. A shell screamed overhead. A 
minie ball wailed and shrieked the length 
of the line. Each man leaned forward in 
his saddle, and hitched his belt a notch 
tighter. 

“ Ta-ta. Ta-ta-ra. Ta-ta-ra-a-a-a! ” 

In ten seconds the company was making 


126 


Stories from McClure’s 


a saber charge now historic. It was a cum¬ 
brous whirlwind of horse and rider, and 
above, the sheet lightning of flashing sa¬ 
bers. The lightning faded, and the sabers 
were dripping, but not with rain. A gray¬ 
sleeved arm was swinging a saber at his 
throat. Like a machine moving at higher 
speed, his own saber met and drove back 
that of the gray arm, and rested upon the 
cheek of the wielder. When his own saber 
swung to position its mark was upon the 
face. The face wavered for an instant, and 
then pitched forward. Was it a dead face? 
He never knew. 

“ Pa, did you ever kill a man when you 
was in the war ? ” 

His pa, like one waking from a deep 
sleep, answered slowly, “ Not that I know 
of, my son.” 

“ Well, I’m awful glad you didn’t,” said 
the little boy, as he again moved closer to 
the side of his pa. 

The little boy was sleepy and quite tired 
out when he reached the farm-house on the 
hill-slope. His ma heard them coming, and 
opened the big gate for them to drive into 


The Little Boy and his Pa 127 

the barnyard. As the little boy climbed out 
of the buggy and into the arms of his moth¬ 
er, he put his arms around her neck, kissed 
her, and exclaimed: “ Oh, ma, I’ve had the 
best time! And I saw Judge Strong, and 
we ate dinner at his house, and pa knows 
nearly everybody, and he made a speech, 
and they nominated him for something, and 
his boy name was ‘ Pony,’ and he could 
swim and tread water and lay his hair same 
as I can.” 

His ma kissed him for reply, and knew 
that the little boy and his pa had entered 
the Land of Companionship together. 



The Accolade 




* 


































THE ACCOLADE 

By Louise Herrick Wall 


D ICK DANA, a strong,well-groomed 
young fellow, stood staring down 
at the coals in the grate, taking 
his punishment, if the truth be 
told, in rather sullen fashion. 

“ Of course,” Rosalie Thornby was say¬ 
ing in her sweet high voice, letting her 
wide-apart eyes rest on him calmly in the 
half-obscurity of the room, “ of course, I 
don’t pretend that there is anything excep¬ 
tional in myself that justifies me in demand¬ 
ing a hero in the man I marry, but I think 
all women, now-a-days, ask too little—ex¬ 
cept fetching and carrying—of the men. 
There was a time when a man won his spurs 
before he expected to win a woman.” 

Dick shifted his weight. 

“ I know,” she said, leaning forward and 
131 


1^2 Stories from McClure’s 

frowning into the fire, “ you would like to 
remind me that you are lieutenant in the 
swellest company of the swellest regiment 
in New York. I have not forgotten that, 
nor the cotillions that you lead so delight¬ 
fully.” 

“ Now look here, Miss Rosalie/’ broke 
in the victim, “ it’s hardly fair to spring all 
these ideas on a fellow without giving him 
a chance. I never knew you expected so 
much more of a man than other girls; and 
now you put me through a civil service ex¬ 
amination without a chance to cram. You 
seemed to like to dance and all the rest of 
it, and I’ve never noticed that you demand¬ 
ed knight-errantry and that mediaeval busi¬ 
ness of the other men.” 

“ You are quite right,” she replied with 
spirit. “ I do not demand things of men 
who demand nothing of me. You said you 
wanted to know my idea of a man, and I 
have told you. To be the captain of toy 
soldiers or even to lead a cotillion through 
two seasons does not, somehow, strike my 
imagination. Nothing could show better 
how far apart we are than that the expres- 


The Accolade 


133 


sion of my ideals should remind you of a 
civil service examination. You men of the 
North are so desperately utilitarian.” 

The challenge dropped unanswered, and 
she went on more gently: “I have an old 
coat of my fathers. He was what you 
would call a rebel, you know. It is the dirt¬ 
iest, most faded old thing. There is a bul¬ 
let-hole in the sleeve, and our Southern 
moths have tried to help the story by mak¬ 
ing a lot of other holes. It has seen real 
service, and somehow its dinginess takes the 
dazzle out of the gold lace you young fel¬ 
lows wear so jauntily.” 

Into the man’s mind came the memory of 
a night spent in the Brooklyn streets: mi¬ 
litiamen surrounded by a mob of strikers, 
an icy night sky from which the drizzle fell 
ceaselessly on a group of men squatting 
about a feeble bonfire; there were others, 
without blankets, who huddled in one of 
the deserted street cars, unable to sleep for 
the cold. Now and then came a quick clos¬ 
ing in of the hooting mob, and a brick-bat 
or paving-stone crashed in a car-window or 
scattered the group about the fire. He re- 


134 


Stories from McClure’s 


membered the rage of spirit under the cow¬ 
ardly attacks of the mob, the rasping inac¬ 
tion, the effort of holding men steady when 
their anger is your own. It came and went 
through the man’s mind, and left a slight 
smile on his lip. The girl went on: 

“ I don’t mean to be hard, Mr. Dana,” 
she said, with a caressing accent that meant 
little from her, whose voice was full of 
pretty inflections, “ but this is not a sudden 
caprice, as you seem to think. I was four¬ 
teen when my father died, and I will show 
you a silly thing I wrote then, and that I 
have scarcely looked at since.” 

As she moved across in the firelight to a 
clumsy old secretary and drew out the rods 
to support the leaf of the desk, Dana’s 
gloomy eyes followed her instinctively. 

“Shall I make a light?” he asked with 
constraint. 

“ No; I know how the paper feels.” 

She came back presently, and seating her¬ 
self on the low corner seat, held a single 
limp sheet toward the fire. The light 
struck through the old-fashioned cross- 
barred French paper in a checker work of 


The Accolade 


135 


half-luminous lines, and on the girl’s broad 
forehead and parted hair. The envelope ly¬ 
ing on her lap was labeled “ May 4th, 1888.” 
She glanced down the sheet. Then gravely 
handed it to Dana. 

He found a number of short sentences, 
written with a fine-tipped pen in an un¬ 
formed hand. Each clause was numbered, 
and the heading ran: “ The Not Impossi¬ 

ble.” 


1. He must not be less than twenty-six years old. 

2. He must not wear jewelry. 

3. He must not be facetious. 

4. He must not ever blow. 

5. He must not be a business man, if he can help 

it. 

6. He must be sincere. 

7. He must be brave. 

8. He must have nice teeth. 

9. He must not be fat or very handsome. 

10. Above all he must be a man to be proud of. 

The young man read through the child’s 
list of requirements, twice over, and re¬ 
turned the paper stiffly. 

“ I feel honored to have been allowed to 
see the plans and specifications for your 
future husband, Miss Thornby. I hope he 


136 


Stories from McClure’s 


will come up to expectations, but I think 
you would have saved yourself trouble in 
drawing up that paper if the first clause had 
simply called for a gentleman/’ 

Presently, standing very straight, with 
his toes turned out, Dana was bowing him¬ 
self manfully from the field of defeat. And 
so the solemn young things parted, too con¬ 
cerned with the business of living to taste 
the humor of life. 

A few months later, in the early sum¬ 
mer, Dana’s widowed sister and her little 
boy, Jamie Talcott, were staying, not entire¬ 
ly by chance, in the same house where Ro¬ 
salie Thornby was spending the summer, 
down at South Hampton. The Talcotts 
had only been down a few days, and Dana 
was to spend the week’s end with his sister. 
On a sunny, breezy morning, the two wo¬ 
men stood together at the end of the long 
porch absorbed in earnest talk. From time 
to time they glanced below to where Jamie, 
in the shadow of the house, threw up long 
lines of earthworks. As they talked, the 
girl gradually moved nearer to the mother; 


The Accolade 


137 


then at some turn in the conversation im¬ 
pulsively clasped her hand over the older 
woman’s, as it lay on the rail. The breeze 
playing upon them caught the folds of the 
girl’s muslin dress, and for a moment 
wrapped the two figures together. Beyond 
the smooth dark head and the bright one 
lay the blue sea and the surf pounding in on 
the white sand. An arbor of leafy boughs, 
built for some festival, had turned brown 
and dry, making a rich blot of color on the 
sand, and beneath it lay a yet darker pool 
of shadow. 

“ And so I have waited to have it done 
again until Dick comes down,” the mother 
was saying quietly. “ He gets hold of Ja¬ 
mie better than I can, and has helped me be¬ 
fore. I think the child bears it well for 
such a little fellow, but he is not much more 
than a baby.” 

The boy feeling their steady gaze upon 
him, looked up from the line of tin soldiers 
he was planting behind his redoubt, and 
scrambling to his feet, he called out: 

“ You better take care or you’ll get your 
heads blown off.” 


i3 8 


Stories from McClure’s 


He was still in petticoats, and it was not 
instantly that one realized that under the 
blue smock frock, fashioned like an artist’s 
blouse, the boy’s back was queer. He had 
a gallant little face, with steady, softly black 
eyes—like big black-heart cherries—and 
full bright lips. 

“ When the doctor comes, couldn’t you 
let me help. I should love to sing for him 
—or—or anything,” the girl urged. 

“ You might stay in the next room, and 
if we needed anyone else, we could call upon 
you. He has to be undressed, and the 
standing seems very long to him. No 
one need know you are there unless you 
choose.” 

The door was partly open between two of 
the upper bedrooms when the doctor came, 
A table with a folded blanket and sheet 
stood near the center of the room. Jamie 
sat half on and half off his mother’s lap, 
screwing about uncomfortably while she 
tried to feed him from a cup in which bread 
crumbs and red beef juice made an unpleas¬ 
ant-looking mess. The spoon moved more 
and more slowly as the boy reluctantly 



The Accolade 


139 


mouthed, and more reluctantly swal¬ 
lowed the food. The doctor was arrang¬ 
ing a sort of hanging harness from the ceil¬ 
ing, and the boy’s eyes followed his move¬ 
ments as he adjusted the pulley by which 
the harness was raised or lowered. Pres¬ 
ently Jamie pushed the spoon aside petu¬ 
lantly. 

“ You must eat a big dinner this time, 
Jamie,” Mrs. Talcott remonstrated. “ Dr. 
Pangry is going to put a new jacket on you, 
and we want this one big enough to hold 
plenty of dinner.” 

The boy turned from these trivialities and 
said imperiously, “ I want Uncle Dick.” 
As he spoke came the sound of a brisk step 
and the clatter of a sword. Dana came in, 
in full-dress uniform, looking very slim and 
fit in the close gray, with white crossed 
shoulder-belts, epaulets, and white gloves. 

“ Corporal,” he said sharply to the child, 
“ salute! ” 

The boy slid from his mother’s lap, step¬ 
ped out in his bare feet from the entangle¬ 
ment of the shawl that had covered them, 
and raising his hand, palm out, to the fur- 


140 Stories from McClure’s 

like blackness of his soft straight hair, sa¬ 
luted his officer. 

Motioning sternly to the half-empty cup, 
Dana said, “ Corporal, rations! ” 

Jamie hesitated a second, then seizing the 
spoon, gulped hasty spoonfuls. When he 
had eaten all, he lifted his hand again, and 
said deferentially, “ Were the sentries on 
duty at the door, sir, when you came in ? ” 

Dana stepped back with measured tread, 
and opening the door, saw two tiny tin sol¬ 
diers standing guard, one at each side of 
the entrance, while two others were lying 
covered over in a cigar-box half-filled with 
straw. He came back in a moment, say¬ 
ing: 

“ I have given them orders to let no one 
pass the lines without the countersign.” 

The doctor rolled the table under the sus¬ 
pended harness, examined the white rolled 
bandages on a small table at his right, felt 
the temperature of the water in the basin 
standing beside the bandages, glanced at 
his watch, and said cheerily: 

"All ready, Mrs. Talcott! ,, 

“ Right about face! ” was Dana’s order. 


The Accolade 


141 

Then falling in line, fitting his stride to the 
boy’s step, the leader of cotillions marched 
his man up to the table. A small house¬ 
maid’s ladder stood there. 

“ Mount! ” came the order. 

The corporal scrambled up, steadied him¬ 
self with an effort, and stepped out upon the 
table, his eyes wide and earnest. The blue 
smock was unfastened and stripped down, 
leaving the child naked but for the plaster 
jacket covering his body—a body strangely 
thick through for the slender brown legs to 
support. The doctor laid the boy on his 
back, and with a few quick slashes cut down 
the front of the plaster cast, and took the 
child out from the mold that had encased 
his body for three months, as one might 
take a little brown almond out of its shell. 
The mother laid the useless husk gently 
aside, took from the doctor the undervest 
he had drawn off over the boy’s head, and 
rolling up the sleeve of her summer dress, 
plunged one of the rolled bandages into the 
basin, squeezing and working it to allow 
the water to penetrate the whole wad. A 
fresh seamless vest was passed over the 


142 


Stories from McClure’s 


boy’s head, and drawn snugly down over the 
narrow hips. 

“ Attention! ” called Dana. “ Chest out! 
Stomach in! Eyes striking the ground at 
fifteen paces! ” 

The boy stood erect. 

The collar of the harness was next fitted 
about the child’s neck, the leather straps 
drawn close under chin and nape, and 
buckled. Then the doctor, pulling on the 
hoisting tackle, drew the tiny figure up un¬ 
til it was stretched out full length and al¬ 
most lifted from its feet. The boy’s eyes 
widened as he felt himself lifted by the 
head; but he had been by this way before, 
and he only set his soft lips until the full¬ 
ness was pressed away. 

“ Now, my man, put up your hands and 
hold on to the tackle,” the doctor coaxed. 

Jamie turned his eyes to Dana, who nod¬ 
ded sharply. So up went two small dark 
hands, deeply veined with blue, and the lit¬ 
tle figure—heavy at the chest and light at 
the loins—was lifted yet higher, so that the 
babyish feet barely rested on the table. 

Folded strips of white gauze were padded 



The Accolade 


M 3 


about the bony prominences, and the crook¬ 
ed spine was filled out to offer an even sur¬ 
face, so that the child would not be chafed; 
then the doctor called for the first plaster 
bandage. Mrs. Talcott handed him the 
saturated roll of narrow white crinoline 
through which plaster of Paris had been 
sifted. The doctor laid an end upon the 
boy’s side, well down over the abdomen, 
and gradually unrolling with one hand, 
modeled with the other the wet cloth about 
the upstretched figure. 

Dana, meanwhile, walked slowly up and 
down before the table, keeping a keen eye 
on the boy’s face squeezed into the leathern 
harness. 

“ Steady, corporal! ” he called, when the 
boy sagged from weariness. But the room 
was for the most part very quiet except for 
the clatter of the sword, the even tread, or 
the sound of the doctor’s hands on the wet 
bandages. Round and round the strips 
were wound in slow overlapping spirals, up 
to the hollow pits of the upraised arms, and 
down over the babyish paunch of the full 
stomach. The doctor seemed to be shaping 


144 


Stories from McClure’s 


the child like dough between his palms, as 
he wound the pliant swathes close about 
him. Then Dana cleared his throat, and 
talked about his regiment. It would take 
at least a quarter of an hour for the plaster 
to set, a bad quarter of an hour to hang 
by the neck with arms clasped over the 
head, feet touching the table, chest out, 
stomach in, and eyes striking the ground 
at fifteen paces. 

“We go to the drill because we must,” 
Dana was saying; “ and the men wear uni¬ 
forms the color of your smock, with white 
bands crossed over their backs, and they 
march all together. When they cross the 
armory—like this, but all in a row—their 
legs make X, and you can see the light be¬ 
tween in a pattern. It is night-time when 
they drill, and over their heads is a big 
round roof like in the railway station, and 
from the roof electric lights—big shining 
white eggs like Sinbad the sailor saw— 
shine down and make it almost as light as 
day. When the command comes to ‘ Order 
Arms!' down go the rifles with a big, big 
bang, and the noise goes rolling in the roof. 


The Accolade 


*45 


You’d think it was the big ball in the bowl¬ 
ing alley up there over your head. Then 
the men march by fours, shoulder to should¬ 
er, so close that you cannot even see the 
white cross-bands on their breasts. So 
close, corporal, that the long narrow line 
looks like a long blue scarf that is being 
shaken up and down with two hundred 
heads bouncing on top. Then the music 
plays and the men step out—all straight 
and soldierly. That’s better, corporal! 
And when the captain tells us to kneel, we 
kneel, and when he tells us to fire, we fire. 
Every good soldier must do as he’s told, 
and that makes a man of him after a while.” 

The little blue-veined hands took a fresh 
grip of the tackle overhead. “ Sing about 
the ’eathen! ” said the mouth that moved 
with effort in the leather harness. 

Then Dick Dana sang, in a big, untrained 
voice, a tune of his own making, about: 

The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood 
an’ stone ; 

'E don’t obey no orders unless they is ’is own ; 


146 Stories from McClure’s 

’E keeps ’is side-arms awful; ’e leaves ’em all 
about; 

An’ then comes up the Regiment, an’ pokes the 
’eathen out. 

The tune had a way of running out and 
leaving Dick Dana’s big voice just talking 
the words loud, clear, and sing-songy. 

The doctor had done his work and was 
washing the plaster from his hands before 
the raw recruit, disciplined by hard knocks 
into an honorable color-sergeant, led his 
men where 

-the hugly bullets come peckin' through the 

dust; 

An’ no one wants to face ’em, but every beggar 
must. 

The doctor felt the cast, snapped at it 
with thumb and finger, and the plaster gave 
back a sound. “ Another minute,” he com¬ 
mented. 

And Dick Dana, with a fresh augmenta¬ 
tion of sound and time, sang: 

’E’s just as sick as they are; ’is’eart is like to split; 
But ’e works ’em, works ’em, works ’em, till ’e 
feels ’em take the bit ; 


The Accolade 


147 

The rest is ’oldin’ steady till the watchful bugles 
play, 

An’ ’e lifts ’em, lifts ’em, lifts ’em through the 
charge that wins the day ! 

The doctor unclasped the weary hands 
from the tackle, unclasped the collar buckle, 
and lifted the small rigid body in the cast 
across his two arms, and laid the boy on 
his side on the table. 

“ Let him rest here for a few minutes, 
then put him to bed. He will sleep from 
exhaustion.” 

The mother covered him lightly, slipped 
a tiny pillow under his head, and followed 
the doctor out. 

When they were alone, the young militia¬ 
man knelt down beside the table and looked 
into the face on the pillow, damp with per¬ 
spiration and discolored about cheeks and 
chin by the pressure of the straps. The 
eyes were closed heavily, and regular 
breathing lifted the little warrior’s corse¬ 
let. Dana took off his plumed cap, and 
laid his firm ruddy cheek against the small 
relaxed hand that lay, palm up, uncurled 
languidly beside the sleeping boy. 


148 Stories from, McClure’s 

He did not hear Rosalie cross the car¬ 
peted floor, She hesitated—then drawing 
his sword lightly from its scabbard, she 
touched his shoulder with the blade, saying 

“ Arise, sir knight! Be faithful, brave, 
and fortunate as on this day! ” 

Dana started to his feet—but softly, with 
an instinct not to arouse the child—and 
turning, saw the girl balancing the sword 
between her hands with a movement of 
sudden fear and flight about her posture. 

“ What do you mean ? ” he whispered. 

“ Don’t you know ? ” she smiled. 

Then as his eyes kindled, she stepped 
aside, and leaning low over the child, kissed 
the red lips pressed out in happy sleep. 
Jamie stirred. 

“ Captain,” he murmured, “ has some one 
crossed our lines ? ” Then more drowsily, 
“ Relieve the sentry at the door, Uncle Dick. 
My men are—very tired.” 


A Love Story 
















A LOVE STORY 


By Annie Webster 

I T was not her first love. She had loved 
before, but never in this way. She 
looked with a certain pitying scorn on 
the fleeting attachments of two years, 
a year, six months ago. “ I was very young 
then/’ she thought, looking up through the 
apple-blossom tree under which she lay. 

She was ten years old now. Ten just the 
day before the day before yesterday. And 
day before yesterday was the first time she 
had seen Her. It had cost her a great deal 
to go to school that day. It was her birth¬ 
day, and the sun shone. But she had gone. 
Things are very hard at times, but now how 
glad, how glad she was! 

Now, lying under the apple blossoms, she 
made a great resolve. She would never 
catch on sleighs again. Supposing it had 

15 * 


j cj 2 Stories front McClure’s 

been winter, and a sleigh had come by and 
she had caught on, and She had seen her! 
Oh, perhaps She had seen; perhaps that was 
the reason why She had not even looked at 
her in school yet. Solemn tears came to 
her eyes. “ I will wash the dishes every 
day, every day, without being asked,” she 
thought. 

If her legs were only thin! She had such 
lovely thin legs. And blue eyes, truly blue, 
instead of all sorts of colors mixed up. And 
her hair was long and braided, and had a 
little point at the end instead of twisting up 
and rumpling up, especially in church, un¬ 
til you were simply obliged to take your hat 
off or suffocate. 

Perhaps She would have spoken that 
very morning if her hair had been different. 
No one understood. No one cared. She 
had not seen Her for two days, and just 
that morning she was looking in the glass 
to see if she had not changed at all, or 
grown very pale, when her mother began to 
twist the end of her braid around and 
around, and there it was all turned up 
again. No one understood; no one in the 


A Love Story 


*53 


whole world—except God. He must. How 
near the blue sky seemed beyond the apple 
blossoms! 

Suddenly she saw her brother come out 
on the piazza, look around, and then steal 
softly back of the house. “ He’s after my 
things, I bet,” and she sprang up and after 
him; but she stopped in the midst of her 
run, hesitated, turned back, and then ran 
eagerly after him again. “ I’ll show him 
where I’ve hid the treasure, and I’ll let him 
have my bower up in the tree,” she thought. 
She ran on, tripped, and tore her dress. 
Her brother saw her coming, and fled pre¬ 
cipitately over the fence. Then she leaned 
her head against a tree and looked down at 
her torn dress, and a great wave of sadness 
came over her. “ Mother will scold, too, I 
suppose. No one knows how changed I 
am. I am going to die pretty soon, I 
guess.” 

The next day she went early to school 
and laid an armful of apple blossoms on 
Her desk. Then she crept softly out and 
lingered at the school gate, watching. But 
when She came near, walking quite slowly 



154 


Stories from McClure’s 


—not running at all, in fact, or even skip¬ 
ping—with her “ geography ” under her 
arm; with her truly blue eyes; with her hair 
which did not rumple or twist, but which 
ended in a little point; with her thin legs; 
the little girl’s courage failed. She turned 
back, and walked slowly up the school walk. 
Her heart beat fast. “ Maybe she’ll catch 
up and speak to me.” But She came up the 
walk behind, not even trying to step over 
all the cracks. “ Maybe she’ll fall down 
and break her leg, and I’ll have to go for the 
doctor.” But no; it did not seem to occur 
to Her even to see how many steps She 
could jump up. The little girl hid herself 
behind the cloak-room door, and watched 
through the chink to see if She would see 
the apple blossoms. Her desk was covered 
with them, so She broke off several twigs 
all pink and white, and taking up the others, 
threw them from the window. There were 
too many. She would have had no place to 
write on. “ They were just common 
things. I’d ought to have brought lilies or 
roses or something lovely,” moaned the lit¬ 
tle girl in the cloak-room. She did not ven- 


A Love Story 


*55 


ture in until the others came. Then she 
saw that She had pinned the apple-blossom 
twigs on her dress. 

She wouldn’t have pinned them on if she 
had minded their being so common! How 
beautiful the world was! How could any¬ 
one ever be bad! How good God was! She 
couldn’t have minded it! Passing Her 
desk she looked right at Her, and said soft¬ 
ly, “ Thank you.” Then she rushed on, 
her heart beating. 

But at her own desk, from where she 
could see the thin legs coming down below 
the seat, and above, the lovely braid, all but 
the little point, her heart sank. She real¬ 
ized now how the deformed man in her 
street felt. “ Why does God make some 
people so nice and some so horrid ? ” she 
thought in despair. At recess, however, 
she was obliged to pass Her desk often. At 
last the bell struck, and as she went to her 
seat she said to Her: 

“ Hello!” 

“ Hello! ” said the other little girl. 

The next day they became intimate 
friends. The new scholar’s name was Ro¬ 
salie. The little girl was not surprised. 


156 Stories front McClure’s 

She had known from the beginning it must 
be that—that or Violet. Her own was only 
Jessie. 

There was another girl of the same age, 
whose name was Lilian. These three used 
to walk home together, arm in arm, talking 
very fast, and quite oblivious of the ordi¬ 
nary human being, except when he, by 
chance, plucked up courage to beg to be 
permitted to pass. They had the power of 
seeing who it was without looking or paus¬ 
ing and overheard his request, granted it 
graciously, or swept past in a rush of indig¬ 
nation, in accordance with some delicate 
mind-process. 

Rosalie and Lilian lived on adjacent 
streets, Jessie further on, so they separated 
one by one. One day Jessie asked Rosalie 
to walk on to the next corner. She did it. 
Then Jessie walked back again. That 
could not happen often, however, for Rosa¬ 
lie's mother had said she must come right 
home from school. 

Some people were so different from other 
people. Rosalie was never bad, never! 
Lilian was lovely, too, though she some¬ 
times did things. And some people were so 


A Love Story 


*57 


bad. They didn’t mean to be, but it just 
came. Rosalie really liked to put on her 
best clothes. It was true, She did. And 
they must have been just as uncomfortable 
as other people’s. 

The little girl looked up at the trees over¬ 
head with their fresh little green leaves, 
and the blue sky beyond. A song she had 
heard one day in the Sunday-school came to 
her mind. She could remember only de¬ 
tached lines, and she hummed them as she 
went: 

“ Yield not to temptation, 

For yielding is sin. ” 

Rosalie didn’t. 

“ Each victory will help you 
Some other to win. 

Strive manfully onward, 

Dark passions subdue—” 

The sunlight danced among the little 
green leaves, but the little girl did not notice 
it. Looking up beyond, she repeated, ab¬ 
sorbed in determination: 


“Dark passions subdue.’ 


1^8 Stories from McClure’s 

A boy whistled to her from across the 
street, but she did not hear him. She 
looked around with grave eyes. Near her 
was a half-built house, with a quantity of 
waste wood lying around it. Suddenly 
Jessie sprang toward it and began to gather 
a big bundle, as much as she could carry. 
She was obliged to lay her books down, and 
forgot them as she trudged away. “ I’ll 
take it to the Poor Woman across the 
bridge,” she thought. The load grew very 
heavy, and her heart filled with solemn joy. 
“ Dark passions subdue,” she sang softly to 
herself. 

The load grew heavier. The world was 
very sad. There was this Poor Woman. 
Then the deformed man. And all the bad 
people. “ I must be cheerful, though,” she 
thought. “ She would be.” 

There was no one in sight at the Poor 
Woman’s house. Jessie laid her bundle 
down at the door very softly, and then ran 
away as fast as she could, her shoes clatter¬ 
ing on the loose board sidewalk as she ran. 
When she stopped, out of breath, the whole 
world was glowing in a golden mist. Noth- 


A Love Storj 


*59 


ing was quite clear before her eyes, not the 
flowers, nor the trees with their little leaves, 
not even the blue sky. She had never been 
so happy before. “ Rosalie, Rosalie, Rosa¬ 
lie,” she sang as she skipped along. Then, 
as she came near her home, a feeling of 
solemn responsibility came over her. “ I’ll 
make Tom learn that song, too,” she said; 
and she repeated it, looking up at the sky: 

“ Dark passions subdue.” 

The days slipped past. The three girls 
had been intimate friends four weeks. Ro¬ 
salie and Lilian studied their geography to¬ 
gether; Jessie lived too far away. They 
knew each other’s inmost souls, and were 
closely united by a common passion for the 
teacher. They invented a cipher, the ex¬ 
planation of which each kept hidden away 
in the most secret part of her desk. It 
worked beautifully, for each one was per¬ 
mitted to add a new sign whenever it 
seemed necessary. Then they would read 
the accumulated notes on the way from 
school, and laugh, and it made the other 
girls simply wild. They likewise gathered 


160 Stories from McClure’s 

large thorns, and swore to prick their fin¬ 
gers and write all very important notes in 
their blood. These notes were to be kept 
forever. However, an insurmountable dif¬ 
ficulty presented itself—the pricking hurt. 
So a bottle of red ink was substituted. 

It was in black ink, however, that a note 
was written by the little girl one morning. 
The name was signed in blood, and a rose 
was thrust through the middle of the note. 
The contents were as follows: 

“ I can come and study geography this afternoon.’ 

Rosalie read it, and passed it over to Lil¬ 
ian when Jessie did not see. They looked 
at each other a minute, without speaking, 
and then Rosalie wrote in answer: 

“ We aren’t going to study this afternoon.” 

We plan and arrange for everything, and 
then nothing comes of it. Life is bitterly 
hard. Perhaps God means that we shall 
be very unhappy most of the time, so that 
we shall get to be good sooner. 

But the next day Rosalie wrote a note in 
cipher saying that she could come over after 


A Love Story 


161 


school. That day the world took hands 
with Jessie, and danced with her along the 
way. 

A week later she said again that she could 
come over and study geography. Lilian 
looked at Rosalie. “ We don’t study to¬ 
gether any more,” she said to Jessie. 
“ Didn’t you know? ” In fact, it was arith¬ 
metic they studied together now. 

The next day Rosalie stayed after school 
to help the teacher. “ She’s always doing 
something lovely,” thought Jessie. She 
looked around for Lilian, but could not see 
her. She walked down the path very, very 
slowly, hoping Rosalie would catch up. 
Then she waited at the gate, but Rosalie 
did not come. 

“ She’ll be very pale to-morrow,” thought 
Jessie, lost in wistful admiration, as she at 
last turned away alone. 

The next day they all walked home to¬ 
gether, arm in arm; but the next Lilian had 
to stay to arrange her books. Rosalie 
waited for her. “ Don’t you wait,” she said 
to Jessie. “ Two don’t need to, and I will.” 
The next day Rosalie forgot something, and 



162 


Stories from McClure's 


went back to look for it. The other two 
waited for a while at the gate, then Lilian 
went back to look for Rosalie. Jessie wait¬ 
ed longer, then she went to look, but there 
was no one in the building—not in the rec¬ 
itation-rooms—not in the cloak-rooms—not 
even behind the doors. 

For a week after that they all walked 
home together, arm in arm, discussing 
“ standings ” and other little girls’ hair, and 
deciphering letters, oblivious as ever of the 
intruding wayfarer. After that Rosalie 
stayed after school every day. At first Lil¬ 
ian did not wait. Then she did. 

A sense of deep unworthiness deepened 
each day in Jessie as she went down the 
walk alone. “ She was so lovely, I guess I 
forgot to be good.” Through the tears in 
her eyes she saw Her before her in all her 
unapproachable perfection. The truly blue 
eyes, the braid with the little point, the thin 
legs—she had seen all these things from the 
first. But it was not until they became .inti¬ 
mate friends that she had understood what 
She really was. 

But it was almost more than human 


A Love Story 


16 3 

strength could bear, walking home alone. 
One day she waited behind the school un¬ 
til they had come out together. Then she 
ran across the fields and came up to Rosalie 
alone near her home. “ Rosalie! ” she 
called out. Rosalie did not seem to hear. 
“ Rosalie! ” Rosalie turned and waited for 
her. 

“ Don’t you like me any more, Rosalie ? ” 
cried the little girl. 

“ We’re tired of you always hanging 
round,” said Rosalie. 

The little girl turned back. She sobbed 
as she ran, “ She might have told me so be¬ 
fore ! She might have told me so before! ” 

Whether it was three weeks or three years 
that now passed is a matter of slight im¬ 
portance. But it was a very, very long 
time. Sorrow ages a person, and she was 
quite changed. Sometimes she forgot all 
when she was reading or playing ball, but 
later she remembered again. At night she 
always remembered. One night she could 
not sleep. Every now and then she would 
get up and look out of the window to see if 
it was not morning, until at last about ten 
o’clock she cried herself to sleep. 




j 64 Stories from McClure’s 

But the last day of school came. The 
“ standings ” were read aloud. Rosalie 
stood first, Jessie second, and Lilian third in 
the grade. For a moment the world grew 
bright again. Then she saw Rosalie and 
Lilian sitting in the same seat, comparing 
“ standings.” 

School was over and a very long time 
passed. One day Jessie was walking along 
the street when she heard some one running 
behind her. She turned and saw Rosalie. 
Rosalie had a bunch of flowers in her hand. 

“Don’t you want one?” she asked. Jes¬ 
sie took it, and they walked side by side. 
After a minute Jessie turned to Her. ** Can 
you ever forgive me ? ” she asked in a whis¬ 
per, her lips trembling. 

Rosalie was deeply moved. She threw 
her arms around Jessie and kissed her. “ Of 
course I can,” she cried. 

They walked on with their arms around 
each other’s waists. Jessie did not speak. 
There are no words for such things. For 
she knew now that they were intimate 
friends forever. Forever and ever. 


























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